You're not going to like this... Diet Plus?
Is a new 2.6in tyre size standard on the horizon?
We’ve been digging around and keeping a firm grasp of the grapevine and basically in an amazing – but somewhat unsurprising – move we suspect The Bike Industry is about to push another tyre size onto us.
It’s going to lie somewhere between 27.5 and 27.5 Plus – namely 27.5 x 2.6in.
We did actually semi-scoop this news a few weeks ago with this story featuring the Rose Root Miller bike (pictured below) with 2.6in tyres.
Rose Roots Miller Plus 2.6 bike
It’s aimed at people with existing 27.5in bikes that may want to try this bigger volume, lower pressures stuff that they hear about on Plus bike but without too much extra weight and/or having to buy a new bike.
Screengrab from a Specialized tyre page
Specialized are doing tyres in this size. Schwalbe are doing them and we think Maxxis is thinking about doing them too.
Who knows, they may even be the future for DH bikes too.
Either way, it look slike we’re going to have to update our Complete guide to wheelsizes page again!
Check out the screengrabs above. Is there a better combination of pics that better illustrate the consumer confusing chaos that’s about to unleashed in bike shops all over the world?
A 2.6in tyre has actually been much talked about and much desired in the cult of fat and Plus bike riders for quite some time. This could actually be argued to be the result of an industry that is actually listening and responding to customer demands.
It’s unlikely to be seen like that though. Having said that, remember the absolute internet commentry meltdown that accompanied the MTB world’s move to 27.5 a few years back?
That moment feels like a sort of watershed moment in the history of mountain biking. Once the industry ‘got away’ with that, the floodgates pretty much opened for the plethora of wheel and tyre size standards that we have to choose from now.