This was our last day at The Sea Otter Classic. Plus bikes were everywhere this weekend. If we didn’t mention them here it would be like trying to ignore an elephant in the room. Just when we thought we were done arguing wheel sizes, a new discussion emerges to talk about tire widths.
Lately the mountain bike buzz has been all about the 27.5 wheel size. In fact it has been labeled by some as the “perfect in-between wheel size”. Well this time around it’s about the + sized tires which are in-between the current 4.0ish fat bike tires and normal 2.2ish tires. Yep, that’s roughly a 3.0 inch tire width trend coming full bore into 2016 models.
In order to make this happen, rims, forks, frames and even hub widths are being modified to take advantage of the +’s.
Most manufacturers are using 27.5 inch wheels while some are going for 29 inch to introduce the + sized bikes. This was very interesting to us, since the 27.5 has been hyped up so much the past few years with some companies even dropping many of their 29 inch bike models.
We discussed the merits of the tire size with several companies. From what we can gather, + sized tires’ combination of larger footprint and ability to run lower air pressures will be similar to having hero dirt all the time. How could you go wrong with that?
We’ll need more time aboard these puggies to form an honest opinion, but for now here are some of the more interesting + sized bikes we spotted.
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