The 32" Watch: Some Background On Those Bigger Big Wheels

Not really a novel concept. (Image courtesy of Baum Cycles)

 The 32"er wheel thing is all the buzz in certain circles of the cycling innerwebs. I decided today to take a cruise through the archives of 20 years of information logged on this platform to see if anything might pop up concerning bigger big wheels. 

Like so many other times I research this blog I found things I had forgotten about. Stories about 36'ers and 32" wheels which might surprise you from the standpoint of how long ago some of this stuff has been percolating in the background.  

My first introduction to anything larger than a 29"er wheel was back in 2006 at Frostbike when Ben Witt had brought his creation to the show to share with the bike nerds in attendance. It was a frame welded up by Mike Pofahl with Ben's 36" wheels attached. It was a raw, unpainted idea, and it was very impressive. 

The first 36"er. I had a chance to buy this thing. 

To my knowledge Ben's bike was the first 36" wheeled bike around. I knew of a 32"er cruiser made with Coker branding, but not a 36"er. The bike was an amazing experience. But a parking lot ride does not tell the complete story. 

Fortunately, I was afforded the chance to try the big 36"er out for a couple of months when Ben was considering selling the bike. By this time it had been painted red. This would have been back in 2009. I used it primarily for commuting, and a lot of what people are saying about 32"ers is very true for 36"ers. Big stability, major roll-over capabilities, lots of steering inertia. I was thinking hard about buying the bike and doing gravel on it, but in the end I passed on the offer. 

Eventually someone did do a proper gravel bike with 36" wheels. I wrote about this in 2021. So, yeah.....big wheels on gravel has been a thing for a while already. And if you click the link and read my post from back then, you'll see reference to the idea dating back to 2006. Right about the same time Ben made his first 36"er, and in fact, the idea was spawned by Ben's bike. 

Even as recently as two years ago, Curve Cycling from Australia was producing a big wheeled gravel bike. I posted about that and made my case for Ben Witt's pioneering influence then. So, I think it is a good perspective to give Ben some props for sparking interest in larger than 29"er wheels. Would it have happened anyway? Yeah.....probably. But it happened the way it did. 

And I think that is worth noting. 

Curve Cycling Pushes Boundaries Of Gravel Bikes

Image of Curve Titanosaur courtesy of Curve Cycling.

 Many years ago, at the first Dirty Kanza 200 in 2006, I met a frame builder who was singing the theoretical benefits of a 36" inch diameter wheel for gravel cycling. He theororized that the possibilities of having a momentum-saving, "flywheel" effect could help propel riders up and over the rollers common to Mid-Western gravel roads. 

The idea was so appealing to this man that he was certain it would work, if only.....

If only wheels and tires existed that would be tuned for such riding. All that did exist at that point were items meant for the niche of unicycling. That one-wheeled vehicle whose gearing was determined by wheel diameter only. To get "lower" gearing you had to build a unicycle with a smaller wheel. 20" and 24" being very popular wheel sizes for unicycles. But for over-the-road cycling, those smaller diameter wheels presented "too low a gear", as it were. So bigger hoops were made. The 29"er tires made this more available, but what about larger wheels than that?

That's where 32" and 36" wheels came into play for unicyclists. In 2006 the market for such behemoth sized 'wagon wheels' was super small. So, the available parts reflected that. They were heavy, reliable but heavy. 

Late into 2006 Ben Witt, then the owner of Milltown Cycles in Faribault, Minnesota, had a nutty idea: Take those heavy 36"er unicycle tires and wheels and make a bicycle out of that! And so he did. By February of 2007 he had the finished, but unpainted bike, in the parking lot of parts distributor Quality Bicycle Products and was letting people ride it. I was one of those folks. 

Image of a Salsa El Mariachi 29"er next to Ben Witt's 36"er. (Image courtesy of Ben Witt)

Ben is the "father" of modern 36"ers, as far as I am concerned. No one else was doing this in 2006/07 when Ben had Mike Pofahl braze up that frame and when Ben hand-cut the tread into the heavy 36"er tires. 

Of course, there were things that weren't that great about this idea and this bike in particular. The wheels were ponderous. Due to the straight-gauge, super-long spokes, the brakes were kind of winding up the wheel, and with all that momentum, a typical MTB disc brake was getting pretty over-worked. The geometry of the frame and fork weren't completely realized either. That said, the bike was amazingly fun to ride and the idea sparked off a 36"er movement across the world. Eventually. by 2011, the company, Dirty Sixer came along and started making more 36"er bikes for big and tall folks. This sparked enough activity to warrant lighter tires, rims, better geometries, and other fine details which made 36"ers a "real" viable bicycle, not a novelty item. 

Image courtesy of Curve Cycling

This brings us up to date and now we can appreciate what Curve Cycling has produced here better than we maybe could have before. It should be noted that Curve Cycling basically made this a pre-order option with a trigger for production set at 20 units committed to be purchased. Once they have reached that goal, these bikes, in titanium and carbon, will be coming out. 

With modernized carbon rims, "real" tires that are tubeless, and geometry dialed in, I have no doubt that this bike would ride amazingly well. I know it looks goofy, but that's just us not being around 36" wheels, that's all. I mean, people thought the same about 29"er wheels in 2003, but who thinks a 29"er wheel looks "weird" now? Not may do. We're used to them. 

Will 36"ers be a more commonly seen bike? Doubtful, but you may spy one here or there. They are really best for folks 6ft-plus. The Curve marketing blurb states that this could fit someone as short as 5'7", but.....yeah. You're going to see this more often under 6'4"-plus sized riders than shorter than that height. 

But it is super-cool, and while I cannot vouch for that frame builder's opinion given to me in 2006, I'd sure give this a try to find out if he was right all along.