Haro and the 650b
September 16th, 2007 by Tim GrahlIt looks like Haro may be the next company to jump on the tweener wheel size. Jill Hamilton, brand manager for Haro Bikes, just did a long writeup at her personal blog about setting up a couple Werx Xeons with 650b wheels/tires and giving them a roll. They’ll even have them up at the dirt demo at Interbike next week.
Jump over and have a read of her thoughts and first impression rides.
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it may be nit-pickin, but, if that is the “650b” WS in the pic, isn’t it actually a 27five WS?
Quinn: While the genres biggest promoter, Kirk Pacenti, was the one to first dub the wheel/tire combination “27five”, he has since abandoned that and has gone back to promoting it as 650B again.
So, they are interchangeable terms for the same wheel/tire combination. However, the “27five” moniker is probably going away.
So the new Werks Xenon is going to have a 650B knobby (aka- 650B w/ 26″ knobby), on the stock bike?
Quinn: Ummm………I’m thinking our wires are getting crossed here. Let me explain: The Werx Xenon comes stock with your garden variety 26 inch wheels. (559 ISO diameter).
Haro is playing around with the idea of doing a 650B/27five wheeled version and will have a couple “test bikes” at the demo that are simply Werx Xenon bikes with wheels swapped out to the bigger size 650B’s (584 ISO bead diameter) You can not put a 26 inch tire on a 650B wheel, (note the ISO bead diameters are quite different).
Just for your information, ISO bead diameter is the diameter of the tires bead, which indicates what rim it will fit. (Rims are identified in like manner) Therefore you can see that rims and tires must have matching ISO bead diameters or they won’t work with each other.
I hope I’m not coming off wrong here, I’m just trying to settle any confusion there might be. I’m sensing there might be some.
As Guitar Ted said, Haro isn’t releasing 650b stock with the bikes, they just slapped them on to play around with. But the whole fact that they’re doing that means they’re looking at jumping into that market.
If you remember, Haro came out of no where with their Mary and it was crazy popular. Sales were way beyond what they predicted so with that success under their belts it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if they jumped on the 650b just as quickly.
Thank you Tim, sorry for all the Asides.
One question- from my understanding of the original article, 27five is a 26″ tire on a s50B rim, correct or no?
Nice that the 650b wheels fit just fine in existing 26er Haro frames. I can’t help but think, though, that one could achieve the same result just by running some tall 2.5 tires instead of bothering with an entire new rim and tire size, if it’s that close.
Quinn: Nope. 27five is 650B and IS NOT compatible with anything that we know as 26 inch mtb wheels. 27five is bigger by a little bit and a bit smaller than 29 inch.
Ted you’re comparing apples to Oranges-
29″(700), 27.5(650), 26″(589-ish), One reason I was wondering about the 26″ tire on the 650B rim was(is) that I have never seen a Fire Xc/Klaw/AT xc type 650b knobby, and in the pic above That bike has hella knobby tires.
Oh and exactly why was 27five dropped?
we don’t say 700c mountain wheel, we say 29er. (ie 650b Mountain = 27five)
26″ = ISO 559
650B = ISO 584
29′er = 700c = ISO 622
That is as clear as it gets.
http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/pacenti-introducing-650b-mtb-tires-11794
26″ = ISO 559
650B = ISO 584
29′er = 700c = ISO 622
That is as clear as it gets.
Thank you bloody tongue, I will remember those numbers!
Quinn,
Not sure if you missed it regarding the knobby tire, but Kirk Pacenti had Panaracer make a knobby tire to fit on a 650b rim (now called the “Neo-Moto”). There was a (WTB, I think) prototype a while back that appeared to be a 26″ tread glued to a 650b casing.
Anyhow, to continue what bloody tongue wrote, check this out:
http://sheldonbrown.com/tire-sizing.html#iso
-Sean
Any fat-tire-ready 26″ er will take the 650B’s with moderate tire width. The difference is only 40% that between 26″and 29″. BB will rise only 0.5″.
Hmm…………thanks Bloddy Tongue for that. Seems I can write the same thing and yet nobody gets it. Maybe I should resign and let Bloody Tongue have my job!
jb and Cloxxki make a point to consider: That being the closeness in diameter between a really fat 26 inch tire/wheel and a Neo-Moto mounted to a Velocity Blunt in 650B. In between size indeed! More like a slight difference, albeit to the positive side.
And I hesitate to answer another question from Quinn here, as we don’t seem to be able to communicate well. (I may need assistance Bloody Tongue!) but here goes……
Kirk Pacenti himself dubbed his Neo-Moto tire in 650B a “27.5″ or 27five. (It comes out to about that diameter with a Neo-Moto. ) He then decided to go back to calling it a 650B. No reason really has been given for the switch that I have read.
And to tag on to what Sean has written on the WTB treaded 650B tires: Those were “frankentires” made by Kirk himself to show the idea at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show before his Neo-Motos were available. Kirk cut apart a 29″er Nanoraptor to make those, as I recall. Those were not a WTB produced proto-type.
Take off the gears and suspension and that bike would be sweet!
Hmm… Haro seems poised to go all the way with this wheel size. Talk about an early adopter!
http://forums.mtbr.com/showpost.php?p=3541657&postcount=1
bloody tongue: Dave turner is playing with them too. Look for a bike from him soon!
Well if Dave Turner is getting on board it must be a good thing! Before you know it, Trek and Cannondale will be offering a “B” bike!
bike nerds.