All The Six Fifty Bees Thread! (650b, 27.5 etc.).

#newpagemicdrop

Ok now show me your hair

Pay-per-view like everyone else.

Any consideration of increased frontal area of chonky tyres?

edit, answered for myself: no.

New q:
Would you consider increased frontal area of chonky tyres further down the line?

Any interest in these 2x 42mm Soma Cazaderos? Previous owner obviously used them tubeless, or tried, as there's latex gunk on the inside, but they won't go up for me. Can get a true width on a 23mm rim if needed. £35 posted?

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I consider frontal area of tyres for bikes I'm racing, not gravel bikes.

If I was to race gravel, I'd still go for the biggest tyres I could fit to make up for the last 30 years not riding my bmx like a loon.

cool gravel videos

I quite liked this: https://vimeo.com/425880313
Slow-venia

Would watch again 🙌

Really tempted to get some wheels built up in 650b to run 50c tyres - tempted to ride the Iceland divide but also tempted to enter or ride something like Badlands or the Atlas mountain race.

Any regrets? This is for an Arkose.

Ye they actually managed to do something a bit different. Most of those videos of a group of 30-something men doing multi-day gravel bike tours are terribly boring.

Lots of temptation there! Arkose can fit 700x 45+ can't it? I guess weighing up the benefit of 5mm extra width (equates to a fair bit more volume) over the bigger overall wheel (better on v rough)

Wow that was a lot of temptation :D

Arkose can take 700 x 45c tyres, it can also accept a 650b tyre up to 2”

Think i'd be better spending the money toward a trip than gaining 5mm - though it would make swapping wheels when the bike has mudguards on really easy.

gaining 5mm

My point with this was that 5mm is actually quite a large increase in volume, far more than going from 23c to 28c for example, so it might still be beneficial?
How would it make the wheelswap easier?
You're probably right that the money is better going towards the trip but that also means less new stuff!

I thought arkose could fit 50mm tyres?

How would it make the wheelswap easier?

If the circumference is the same between 700x28 and 650b, in theory is a straight swap

I thought arkose could fit 50mm tyres?

I'm sure it could, I guess that it Evans being cautious and allowing for clearance

My surly has 650x50 w/ guards, I tried some 700x30 in it for the sake of experiment: would not ride. It looked horrendous. I guess you'd have incredible coverage though.

I like how 650b's ride more than 700x40. The latter feels bigger, less nimble etc. and I had toe overlap. But my bike has higher bb than Arkose.

I've just built up a set of 650s on 47s, plan was to run them for off road but I've been using them when I don't care for pace on road too. Like riding on a sofa.

Little wheel upgrade. 650x42

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If I was going to build a 650B dynamo front wheel for the Kinesis - would I use an i23 or an i25?

My set now is i23. Is there a reason to go wider? What do the cool kids use?

2mm diff wont matter too much tbh

Everyone was rushing to go wider for a bigger contact patch but then people started going skinnier again so that less sidewall was exposed to avoid cuts. So now I don't know what the sweetspot is. My plan is to run bigger rubber, say up to 50mm. Maybe I just stick to i23 to match the rear.

Only seem to build with Dt Swiss, Was tempted to go 30mm wide but couldn't justify double the cost. So built up some m462. Maybe a little heavy duty for gravel.
My mistake though was different rear hubs to my 700s. Can you shim CL?

That's lovely, gearing seems high for a gravel bike though!