32-inch Wheels and Mountain Bikes

Neuhaus built a fully-rigid one:

I'm someone who did not have a mtb for a lot of years, so I went from 26 and straight into 29er which obviously had several other improved things as well. It was a bit much with the 29er wheels at first, but I quickly got used to them and now I'd never go back. 32 inch however just seems more like a gimmick, and given most riders in this world are medium to small sized humans it is not something I think will gain much traction. 

There's pros and cons to everything, and you got to draw the line somewhere. Maybe they'll figure a way of making it a niche product, but I just don't see it becoming mainstream.

I'm 6'7", and I'm so excited by the potential. All I'd say is that if you aren't interested in these wheels, don't use them. But please don't ruin it for me. It's ok if not every product is for you... lord knows 99% of bikes don't fit me, and I still enjoy learning about them. 

I can see a lot of brands pushing 32" pretty hard in the hope of more sales. Whether the public's uptake meets their hopes remains to be seen. My feeling is they'll remain pretty niche.

upvoting for Grind Hard, not 32ers! 29 is the limit for my stature, and many many others, I'd suggest.

As someone who does a lot of train and car travel with bikes and stores my bike indoors in my small London apartment, I find the longer modern MTBs give me more issues when traveling around and also take up more space at home. Bigger wheels are only going to make this worse, its certainly going to make me pause before 'upgrading' in the future. 

Given that I'm 5'7" and likely not the target market for 32" I'm still excited to see how it all shakes out; it's entirely possible that something that benefits all riders comes out of it. 

If nothing else I'm looking forward to seeing the various ways builders come up with to design frames around bigger wheels.

I'm really curious about it.
I have a lot of stack and lot of rise on my 29" hardtail (ESD) with 150mm of travel, so there's certainly enough space for a 32" wheel and a bit less travel, so a 100 or 120mm 32" could roll REALLY well (of course weight and head angle/rake are to be considered as well).

Either as 32/29 mullet or full 32" could be interesting, as an XC/trail bike.

I hate everything about 32" wheels, but after losing the battle over the word "loam" I just don't know if I have any fight left in me.

Don't forget about the ongoing dampened vs damped crusade

I got that one!

Relevant graph is relevant.

Something something diminishing returns.

32" is going to be quite the interesting journey with challenges along the way. Tray style hitch racks will have the bikes hanging well outside a lot of side mirrors. 

Sizing, these may not be able to fit all riders. I have heard that bikes have been drawn up that will fit all the way down to current 29er fitments. Beyond that, geo gets funky in trying to make happen. Unfair advantage? In current gravel/XC, everyone is on equal wheelsizes for the most part. 

Bike boxes. These are already challenging to ship at a reasonable rate. It is going to result in less bikes fitting in a shipping container. It results in a lot of new tooling for every manufacturer. It results in new sizes for wheel boxes as well. Also means new shelving for bigger wheel or bike boxes. That means more cubic footage needed to store an equal number of boxes. 

All of this adds millions of dollars in costs to manufacturers and ultimately consumers. Is it that much better to offset those costs?

I'm 100% not the target market and at this rate if they did come out with it, it would take me 20 years to try one, but I'm kinda excited about them. I just got my first 29er this year so I'm not going to be early adopter guy but it could be cool, particularly for bikepacking. 

Why this isn’t exploding in the gravel realm is beyond me. That’s where I see 32” wheels shining. We’ve got the shittiest, washboarded, rough dirt roads here in Colorado. My hardtail is much preferable for long dirt road meanders, I never use my gravel bike because the roads are so rough. Some 2” tires on 32” wheels sounds great for this application.

Don’t see myself buying a new Mtb for the large wheels, and I was a 29 early adopter.

It’s interesting that at a time in which the mtb industry is aggressively trying to reduce costs by reducing the number of distinct parts they make, we see 32ers on the horizon. As a previous 29er asshole who now owns 3 mullet bikes I’m not sure I see this making it out of the XC category. The top 2 complaints with modern bikes are: too heavy and too expensive. This flies directly in the face of both. IMO the only “innovation” consumers will want for the next 5-10 years is lower prices. (unless it’s more energy density for an ebike battery) Can the bike industry survive on its whales buying $8k+ bikes for the latest and greatest?

Not enough tires and rims (yet) would be my guess; pros gotta be sponsor correct...

I could see 32" FS bikes replacing XC hardtails on more mellow old-school style XC tracks, or lower level racing. I think their appeal might be limited to super-tall people at the WC XC level though, since those courses keep getting gnarlier and gnarlier.  Kind of begs the question, how much suspension travel can you lose before things are just too stiff overall and lacking traction. 

Spotted a guy who was maybe 5’8” on a full suspension 32” xc bike today while out on a ride and he was absolutely hauling up and over the top of a choppy fireroad. While it seems pretty EPIC for that application, I think the shorter dimensions and steeper angles of short travel bikes are what allow it to work without the wheelbase getting unreasonably long. The bike certainly didn’t look massive, just the distance between the wheels looked a bit tighter. 

At 6’4” I’m not sure I’d want to maneuver anything much longer than my current XL enduro bike on the kind of terrain I consider fun… but Im sure I’ll be laughing at this conversation in 5 years on my 29/32 mullet downhill bike. 

For a flat bar rigid bike for light xc / gravelling it sounds great. Get me one to complement my 650b trail bike which I still ride and love. 

Of course we said the same 15 to 20 years ago about 29ers and now we have 29er dh bikes.

I think it’s fine to let these things exist in the wild to those that want that experience. But our trails are already getting dummed down. Already getting easier now that machine built flow trails are way more prevalent than real single track often times. I definitely don’t want to ride a 32. I would hope it would stay with the boutique builders. I hate to say let’s work with US cycling and UCI to get some rules in place about no 32s in competition but seems like that’s the only way to slow the madness down from the big companies. 

I’ve seen 32” mules out and about, strapped up with synbike systems… From talking to the mega-corporation employees on them, 32” front wheels will probably be a thing.   32” rear wheels are going to likely be pretty niche.   

I’m sure there will be niches where this wheel size makes sense. And yes, the industry loves a good “paradigm shift” to stir up interest and sales. But I’ll take the other side of this bet. This will stay niche...tall riders, Reggie Miller, certain XC setups, the hardtail-weirdo/bespoke crowd, and the peacocks showing off over $11 IPAs at the brewpub. 

Here’s why:

Weight
These wheels and tires will be meaningfully heavier than 29. Even with weight-weenie tricks, you’re adding 1–2 pounds for a DH-worthy rim, spokes, and tire. Even in XC, expect half a pound to a pound more of rotating weight. This will slow you down, especially when we consider the next point...

What problem are we solving?
Rollover? Yeah, to a point. Inertia carrying speed? I mean, I guess, but there has to be math to this, and it has to be diminishing returns at a point. If bigger was truly better, every DH racer would be on full 29s. Instead, plenty dropped back to mullet setups because it balances rollover with agility. Same in XC: on climbing-heavy courses with hard braking, I’m not even convinced a 29 is always faster. Lighter 27.5s or mullets can even make a lot of sense there (gasp!), we just don't see it for cultural/bike-bike-conspiracy (lol) reasons. Back to the math point, can anyone point to any data showing me how we are absolutely positive 29 is always faster for XC? I always thought it was seat of the pants "felt faster to me". Plus, didn't Nino stick to 27.5 for a lot longer than the field? 

Upper bounds
Every vehicle category eventually brackets into what works. If bigger was always better, we’d see insane wheel sizes across cars, motos, and bikes. We don’t. My gut says we’ve hit the ceiling on juice vs. squeeze for MTB.

Bottom line: weirdos will love it. And yes, we’ll see experiments...maybe even 32/29 trail or enduro setups for taller riders or people who love to frankenbike; but I don't think this proves faster across the board. Time will tell. 

Since it's not been mentioned here but Escape Collective has reported that the UCI are considering a ban on 32" wheels. This is different from the current rules for road (which give a maximum total circumference, which oddly is sometimes exceeded without issue) as the UCI looks to clamp down on MTB more than they previously have. 

That would certainly stymie some efforts since it seems like a big portion of the push is for XC racing, but it could probably move on in gravel since there is no UCI (at the big races, anyways) and gravel is growing. I would guess that, even if 32" was banned in XC, we will see a handful of 'race' bikes come out with that wheel size since brands may have already invested in at least an early mold/prototype (especially since the first 'nice' tire is the XC Aspen). 

Double posting because it's a different topic ish

There was some test (maybe on YouTube?) done a while ago by a Pirelli sponsored rider who found that a ~40mm tire with a gravel suspension fork was faster than a larger tire (50mm+) without suspension for gravel events (I believe it was done for Unbound). It does make me wonder if a rigid 32" wheel would be faster than a suspended 29" wheel, but maybe if you could get away with a ~60mm travel fork on a 32" hardtail instead. Maybe the low speed compression could be stiffer with a larger wheel rollover to maintain efficiency/position and the fork travel is just for bigger hits. That could even be combined with something like a soft-tail to keep things relatively compact. 

With all that said, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what people said about 29" wheels at first, before they infiltrated every bike segment. Hard to parse if the 'better geometry for 29ers' was really just 'better geometry' and we could/would have gone to the same place with 26" instead.

32" wheels: another W for camp men! Way to go team!

Jokes aside, apart from dragging wheelsize debate kicking and screaming from the depths of hell, 32" wheels present some interesting challenges as already seen in this thread - bike design, logistics, etc. I could see that XC/Gravel application working really well, and, for better or for worse, I can see 32" mullet working well elsewhere. How deep towards the DH spectrum will it penetrate? Time will tell. I'm one of the few weirdos who really, really liked some aspects of 29+ so I'm curious, if hesitant myself. 

A major, major point of caution for myself in long-travel applications is that 29er rear wheels are already inherently unreliable for me. An alloy rim will last 3-4 laps down a bike park before I've flexed it too much and the spokes have come too lose to properly ride. Regular carbon is a big upgrade but not immune. I'm currently on an off-menu We Are One DH rim with significantly more carbon than the regular retail version, and for me, it's brilliant... but how heavy are we now talking in a 32" wheel? I can only imagine the problem will get dramatically worse moving from 29" to 32", as 27.5" to 29" significantly reduced the lifespan of alloy rims for me. 

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I do think it's funny that the one guy above is like "I'm 6' 7", regular bikes don't fit me, so I'm excited to try 32" wheels" and roughly half of voting members are like "crucify him!".

Interestingly, as a die-hard 29 wheels fan, the bike I am most interested in at the moment is the WeThePeople Swampmaster, a 20-inch full-suspension BMX. There are many challenges to package a good geo with a 32 inch wheel: toe overlap, room for suspension. People might have said the same thing when 29  wheel was introduced, but the jump to 32 sounds even more dramatic

Ooo is overlap something we're overlooking in the gravel/hardtail/adventure realm? I use my mtb shoes on my gravel bike (cleats slammed as far back as they can go) and have significant overlap on a 700c wheel. This is on a bike that's a size up as well.

I just moved up to an XL 29er from a L 27.5; I was slightly cramped on the old one and LOVE the new ergos. Obviously, some of the change is from geometry, but the wheels rolling all over everything in my path are a huge plus for me. I'd be 100% interested in trying a 32er. 

When are they going to start making 36ers?