I'll agree somewhat with Kieran here, in my experience with a Riv Redwood. The bike felt best with 700x35mm tires, but I'm thrilled that I've been able to transform it into an all-road machine, and will trade handling (only slightly noticeable) for the ability to run 48mm tires and fenders. Long story: I converted my Redwood and very briefly used Hetres (actual 40-41mm) and was glad I had room for fenders, but the handling did suffer. I took it a step further though, installing Vee Rubber Speedsters (actual 47mm) and the handling was improved as the wheel/tire diameter was closer to the original 700c wheel/tire diameter it was designed for. I'm crossing my fingers that the standard casing Compass 650b x 48mm tires will be an actual 48mm width as I should be able to fit those with fenders. David Chicago
On Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at 8:40:47 PM UTC-5, Kieran J wrote: > > I'll go ahead and be the only voice of dissent. I converted a Ram from > 700x33 to 650bx42 recently, and the handling and general swiftness of the > bike suffered in my opinion. The bike was no longer effortless to > accelerate and just didn't glide nearly as well anymore. I noticed this on > hill approaches particularly, as the bike lost momentum quicker and it took > more effort to spin up. > > My 650b experiments are ongoing and hardly clinical in nature, but the > exercise definitely contributed to solidifying my preference for the > 700x32-38mm range. Naturally, this means relatively higher PSI and lower > "cush factor" but speed and agility is possibly more important to me than a > lusciously compliant ride. I think a lot of people value the cush and may > be prepared to accept a certain degree of compromise to achieve that. > Others have reported little to no loss in performance after the switch. > > It's worth pointing out that I am 6'4" with bikes that can accommodate fat > 700c tires well in proportion. I can certainly imagine riders of average or > small size bikes seeing the advantage in converting a 700x28 bike when > relative wheel proportions could present problems. > > KJ > > > > On Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at 4:52:23 PM UTC-4, Patrick Moore wrote: >> >> Heck, perhaps I should have kept my Ram and converted it to 650B. >> >> I'll be interested to hear further impressions. >> >>> >>> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
