Is Retro faster?

I think for me it's more of a question which one is more fun.

This video appeared on my Facebook feed today, and as I was a bit bored at work I did the maths and it turns out the 29er was about 2% (or less) faster than the 26 MTB. Also, we get an idea of the scatter in the measurements of the 3 wheel sizes in this study from the fact that the 650b was 19 seconds slower than the 29er (even slower than the 26"), which suggests a 1-sigma uncertainty of about 2%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxfrykeSNCE

Another, probably better study in Switzerland (more riders) found 29ers are just a few % faster than 26" MTBs, which is consistent with the above.

What's curious is a lot of people swear that 29ers (and to some extend 650b) are vastly faster than 26", by 10% or more. Why could this be? Perhaps the larger wheels truly shine over longer distances than used in the tests, which are probably not representative of normal riding in that they use very short (a few km) courses.

I'd speculate that the larger wheels might not be much faster per se, but conserve more of the rider's energy and stave off fatigue for longer when riding over longer distances. Obviously, doing a 3 km loop isn't necessarily going to detect effects such as these (assuming they exist).

^^ Good post. It only makes a significant diff if you are a pro bike racer. For most of the rest of us its prolly mostly all in the head. Humans only produce around 1/4 hp so the pros/cons are marginal at best. As bike tech takes over and the next gen gets used to incredible gadgets, I predict a hankering for ex cond early original bikes which will become uber cool, like VW Splittys. Retro will always be cool.


Long live retro

when i used go through bikes in my late teens/early twenties..and not having much disposable income, i would be picking up bikes to see what they weighed. any mid price bikes that i have bought over the last 15 years seem to weigh a ton in comparison to my old skinny frames with rigid forks.

so whether the bigger wheels make the bike faster on a flat on downhill isnt going to make a lot of difference when it feels likeyou have to drag a heap of scaffold pole uphill.

fair to say no?

On fire roads maybe.

Some of the top modern CX bikes weigh the same ~ 18.5-20lbs as custom high end builds of the retro era. They look very fragile by comparison with retro and i seriously doubt they will be around in 25yrs after serious use There is also the fact most modern CF frames are made in China, where they dump the waste directly in the Ocean.

The bulk of the old kit we're all chasing after now is stuff that was used lightly or not at all back in the day though.

Carbon frames are surprisingly tough, see videos of them being deliberately smacked off concrete etc.

What I guess I was driving at with my post is that yes, modern is a bit faster thanks to the combination of numerous new technologies like better brakes, better suspension, larger wheels and better tyres, but the difference made by each of these technologies is nowhere near as large as the bike industry's marketing would have us believe.

The disappearance of 26" MTBs in favour of 29 and 650b MTBs is just one annoying example of the bike industry changing stuff without being able to properly demonstrate that their new standard is genuinely better than the old one. The best they can do is a couple of amateurish marketing (sorry, GMBN & Bikeradar) videos with anecdotal (statistically insignificant) studies, which find a marginal difference (just a couple of %). 29ers have been around long enough now that surely their proponents in the industry could have collected enough data to prove once and for all that this wheel size is so much faster than 26?

But I suppose there's some benefit (to the industry) to keep consumers in the dark and guessing, let them think they need to have two or three different wheel sizes in their garage, let them think they need a hardtail and a full suspension bike, let them think their 3 year old bike is obsolete (it probably is if it has a carbon frame...) because there's a new axle standard out. This is the message I get from the marketing machine - the magazines, the youtube channels, etc.

As before, the bicycle as a business model sucks so marketing has to keep smacking us over the head with new ideas to make us insecure and keep buying new, new is better, new will win friends and influence people, new will get you the girls.