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Video: Six of the best 650b Bikes - Wide tyres for conquering rough roads
The return of 650b, an old French wheel standard, is being driven both by the increasingly poor state of our roads and also a growing desire to get of the roads completely and head into the countryside on off-road tracks.
The smaller wheels allow a bigger tyre to be used which provides a lot more cushioning, meaning a smoother ride on rough roads, and lower pressures for off-road grip.
In this video we've rounded up six road plus and gravel bikes that are designed around 650b wheels and tyres, to give you an idea of the different ways bike manufacturers are embracing this trend.
David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes.
Latest Comments
- brooksby 6 sec ago
I'm sure that somethings wrong here, but I don't think that it's the new traffic island...
- Jaijai 7 min 32 sec ago
The vision couldn't have been that good ,they went bankrupt.
- Blackthorne 7 hours 32 min ago
I disagree, the lucky few who get to wear one of these will certainly produce more mass.
- Dnnnnnn 8 hours 7 min ago
That wasn't what my original post was about - it was about the NHS as it is now. If you're going to be run over by an ambulance tomorrow, there are...
- imajez 8 hours 31 min ago
I prefer the not haveing to faff with brakes in first place, which is the typical reality for hydraulic systems.
- Backladder 11 hours 35 min ago
I'm sure the met are merely waiting for it to build up to a critical mass and then they'll swoop in and confiscate and crush them all then there...
- qwerty360 13 hours 27 min ago
Reality - I expect most first year lectures have more than 80 students at them; So 80 bicycle spaces is a rounding error on potential demand....
- whosatthewheel 15 hours 6 min ago
Especially that it is a traffic light controlled junction so he must have been completely blinded not to see the red on his left hand side and a...
- biking59boomer 15 hours 37 min ago
Send the details to UK network rail and Transport for Wales as well!
- KDee 16 hours 26 min ago
So that Pulsium from Lapierre has a 415mm wheelbase? I assume it's on 20 inch wheels then!
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1 comments
Running 650b's on the new addition to the stable, an Ibis Hakka MX.
The cush is pleasant, but I think the key thing is the extra mud clearance. Compared to the 33mm's on 700c equipped GT Grade that I had been riding for several years it almost never clogs up with mud * even when fitted with chunky 2.0" mud tyres.
How well? Well, recently rode a big chunk of the Ridgeway off-road in April. I got many things wrong with the ride, but the bike's ability to cope with gloop wasn't one of them, the photo's from that ride, if interested muddy details over here.
With it finally drying out (he said tempting fate), I've switched back to summer tyres (Thunderburts) this week and I've rediscovered how zippy the bike is.
Overall, seems like best of both worlds and consider myself pretty much convinced that for all-road/gravel/adventure biking where mud is a major factor, such as in the UK, 650b is the way to go.
* There was one section of particularly claggy Buckinghamshire clay in a ploughed field that did defeat it after a "Google navigation error", but to be fair I was struggling to lift my feet out of it to walk on it
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