This is #2 in an ever-growing series of answers to frequently-asked questions about touring bikes. If you’re new here, why not start with #1: What Exactly Defines A Touring Bike?
Many folk seem to think that the choice of touring bike wheel size – specifically, 26-inch (classic mountain bike) or 700C/28″ (road bike) – is a big deal.
It isn’t.
You can make this decision by answering two very simple questions:
- Am I, to put it bluntly, short? (In other words, do I or will I ride a small or extra-small frame?)
- Am I likely to spend a lot of time touring in remote regions of the developing or semi-developed world?
If the answer to either of the above questions is ‘yes’, get a bike based on the 26-inch wheel size.
Regardless of what the industry would have you believe and/or which wheel size is trendy this week, the most important criteria for bicycle wheel size choice is actually that it matches the size and geometry of the frame – which, of course, should be chosen to match the rider’s anatomy.
You can confirm this next time you visit a bike shop and look at the range of bikes designed for variously-sized children. Nobody’s trying to wedge a 29-inch wheel onto a bike for a 5‑year-old just because 29ers are cool right now.
Enlightened manufacturers such as Surly don’t even bother offering popular touring bikes like the Disc Trucker in extra-small sizes with larger wheels. Instead, they downsize to 26-inch wheels at the smaller end of the frame size range, because that’s what intelligent bike design looks like.
So that’s the first and most important thing to know.
Incidentally, there are also a couple of other marginal benefits to going with the tried-and-tested 26-inch wheel size, which until very recently was what all mountain bikes at every price point were built with:
- If you’re looking in the right type of bike shops – that is, mainstream stores like Halfords as opposed to trendy specialist boutiques which also serve artisan coffee – 26-inch tyres, tubes and spokes are available as widely or more so than larger sizes.
- Not every bike shop in Tazbekistan will carry the latest trendy tyre size, but they will almost certainly have 26-inch ones for all the 26-inch-wheeled Chinese spam bikes they sell.
- Shorter spokes means that – all else being equal – a 26-inch wheel is stronger than a larger-diameter equivalent. Stronger wheels are less liable to fail, thus increasing a given bike’s overall durability. (Of course, it helps if they’re hand-built by an artisan wheelbuilder in the first place.)
- If you’re using a generator hub, aka: dynamo hub – guess what? Your 26-inch wheel will generate 11% more power than your friend’s 700C one.
If, on the other hand, the answer to both of the above questions is ‘no’, the best wheel size is whatever comes fitted to the bike that feels right when you test-ride it.
In other words, feel free to move on from the question of wheel size and focus on more important things, such as finding a local bike shop to test-ride touring bikes in your budget range which suit your style of touring.
Then, having chosen the right touring bike, simply check what size wheels and tyres it has and prepare your tools and spares package accordingly.
You will not spend your days on the road wondering how much more enjoyable today’s riding would be if you’d got an extra half-inche of diameter on your rims. You will find expensive spares for diverse wheel sizes in specialist bike shops across the developed world, as well as in the major cities of the developing world where there’s enough of a middle-income population to support a small retail industry for cyclists. And you will find cheap spares in the mainstream bike shops the industry wants you to overlook.
For what it’s worth, if you’re buying a new mainstream touring bike for a road tour in the UK or USA, it’s more likely you’ll end up with a 700C- (aka: 28″-) wheeled touring bike.
That’s simply because there are many more to choose from and test-ride. If you’re already a road-bike rider, you’ll naturally gravitate towards these bikes too.
On the other hand, if you’re in the market for a round-the-world expedition bike, or considering building your own ultimate expedition bike, you’ll find that most (but not all) existing bikes are built on the 26-inch platform anyway.
So rather than fret about what wheel size your bike should have, ask yourself the two simple questions above, which will give you a quick and easy answer.
Then you can get on with asking yourself more important questions, like “can I actually fix a punctured tyre on the roadside?”, and “do I have the tools and skills to repack and adjust the wheel hub bearings after 10,000 miles of riding?”, etc.
Next in the Touring Bike FAQ series: Steel Or Aluminium Frames?
Something to add?