Mountain Bike History 101 and the Single Speed

With the growing buzz about single speeds and the bike industry answering what many riders request of “back to the roots of mountain biking”, I feel its time we talked about the history of mountain biking and how single speeds mountain bikes fit in.

Like snowboarding, mountain biking has evolved a lot since its first conception. Around the turn of the century it is said that road racers in Europe would race each other to neighboring towns but were allowed to take any shortcut they wanted. Even if it meant that they would be climbing fences or riding through fields. This would evolve into the sport of Cyclo-cross. It became popular after Octave Lapize credited winning the 1910 Tour de France because of his off-season Cyclo-cross training. In 1950 Union Cycliste Internationale, a cycling association that oversees competitive cycling events internationally, held its first Cyclo-cross race in Paris. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that Cyclo-cross gained popularity in the US and in 1975 Berkeley California. was the site of the first US National Championship.

Also around that time in California, people were starting to take old fat tire cruiser bikes and modify them with gears and BMX style handlebars. After people started racing these modified fat tire bikes, people started to think about improving the bikes. One of the first things improved was the wheel hubs and breaking system. Racers were always having to repack the bearings in the wheel because of the speeds they were reaching while racing down hill. Racers started to build new wheels combining road wheel hubs and stronger rims to handle the bumps off road.

In the early 1980’s road bike manufactures started making bikes for the mountain bike arena. Using the technology of the time, these new bikes were lighter and stronger then the old fat tire cruiser bikes. Like road bikes, mountain bikes go through the same kind of trends. In the mid 1990’s the single speed trend started with the road bikes and moved its way to mountain bikes by the late 1990’s. The start of the trend for road bikes was from bike messengers. They started taking the gears off their road bikes and making them into single speeds. The reason single speeds appealed to them were because they were more reliable and noticeably quicker and easier to pedal.

Fast-forward to today and you will notice that bike manufactures are now starting to produce single speed mountain bikes. Just like bike manufactures answered the trendsetters’ call to make mountain bikes in the 1980’s they are doing the same for a new bunch of next generation innovators. The benefit today is that technology has come a long way, components on bikes are better then ever and more reliable.

So why should you get a single speed mountain bike? Well single speed mountain bikes are not for everyone. They lack the gears that allow you to make up hill climbs easier and down hill descents faster. That’s not to say you can’t go fast down hill. You just won’t be able to do it as efficient with out gears. If you want a mountain bike that is easier to maintain, more responsive when you pedal, and are looking for a great workout, single speed mountain bikes offer all of that and more. There is nothing wrong with either type of mountain bike. It is more of a personal preference. If you’re looking at getting a new bike I strongly encourage you to look at single speeds. There are some great ones out there and they are a ton of fun to ride.

In the next couple of months we are going to bring you every single speed mountain bike in production that we can get our hands on and put them through their paces. We are working on some of our favorite picks right now but if there are specific bikes you want to hear about let us know.   All I can say is “Are you ready for the ride!”

Mountain Bike Brakes Explained: Braking the Confusion

V-Brakes
With the advent of disc brakes, and the quickly changing mountain bike world, V-brakes are coming out of style. Nevertheless even these still have a place in the MTB world. V-brakes are much cheaper and still a little bit lighter than disc brakes. They are very simple to install, repair and maintain. The downside is they do not offer a lot of stopping power. For heavier bikes and technical terrain, they just can’t deliver enough.

Mechanical Disc Brakes
Mechanical disc brakes have a disc rotor but use a cable to transfer the braking energy. These offer a lot of the stopping power of hydraulic disc brakes but not the modulation, which I’ll go over in a second. Disc brakes, in general, function better in wet conditions than rim brakes, and rim true will not affect their performance. From experience and talking to fellow riders, mechanical disc brakes require frequent adjustment for good performance, yet unlike hydros, you do not have to bleed the brake system or worry about pinched lines.

Hydraulic Disc Brakes
Hydros are the premier choice and what everybody goes for. They require little maintenance, but they do have to be bled every year or so. You can use them with one finger, and they have more modulation than any of the other brake options. Modulation is the amount of control you have over your stopping power. Mechanical discs and V-brakes feel like they are either on or off while with hydraulics you can really control the pressure on the rotor. This is a great thing for technical descents. The last thing you want to do is lock your wheels up. When your wheels are locked all you do is slide and your control is gone. Modulation is the key to this.

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Are 29er’s Really Faster? The Physics Behind the Big Wheels

Some love them, others love to hate them, but hype aside, are 29er’s really faster? The simple answer is yes, but if you are the type who constantly wonders why, here is your explanation.

I hear a lot of talk about momentum whenever 29er’s come into discussion. It is in fact true that 29er’s carry momentum better than 26’s but for different reasons than you may think. Momentum is equal to mass times velocity. Let’s say we have a 26” bike and a 29” bike, both made of the same components. The 29er will naturally be a bit heavier due to the bigger frame to accommodate the wheels, as well as larger wheels, tires and tubes. If we look back to our momentum equation, if both bikes traveled at the same speed the 29” bike would carry more momentum because of the extra weight: However because of this extra weight more energy would be required to maintain the same speed as the 26” bike. In other words if a rider using the exact same effort rode each bike, the 29er would actually be slightly slower than the 26 because of the extra mass. But the big picture is not quite that simple…

Now to the core of the issue, the secret behind the big wheel; contact angle. Contact angle is simply the angle created by the tire and the ground. A 29” wheel has a lower contact angle to the ground than a 26” wheel because of the larger diameter.

Because of the lower contact angle the 29” wheel will cover bumps, rocks, ruts and other obstacles with ease. The 26” wheel has a harsh contact angle and will not climb over these obstacles as gradually as a 29” wheel. This more gradual climbing nature of a 29er means less energy lost to conquering terrain features. The larger wheel diameter also means that the 29er will not hit ever minor bump and rut. Now don’t confuse this with the contact angle principal; in this example the larger wheel simply skips over ruts and bumps.

Because the 29er can conquer technical terrain features more easily, less energy is lost to impact with the terrain, and more is preserved in the momentum. Also less energy is required to maintain a current speed, so less energy is required to maintain the level of momentum. All-in-all 29er’s do indeed carry there momentum better than 26’s in any technical terrain.

Another consideration is momentum capacity. On the trail we have certain sections where we feel comfortable only riding at or below a maximum speed. For instance a very technical flat run with big exposure might cause us to dial down our speed even though we easily have the energy to go faster. Because a 29er is a bit heavier than its’ 26” equivalent, the momentum equation shows us that the 29er will carry more momentum than the 26” when they are both traveling at the same speed.

My Singlespeed Friend

Whoever made the statement that you can never go back to your childhood was wrong. While there is truth to the fact that once we age past those great years of endless child powered energy, we can still recapture pieces of our youth by simply doing the things we used to do. One of the greatest joys I have found recently is the ability to once again tear up the track and trails of my childhood with a single geared mountain bike. Sure the bike needs to be bigger and unfortunately they are a bit more expensive than saving my paper route money can afford, but single gear mountain bikes are a great way to not only remember your childhood, but bring it back as well.

I, like a lot of riders, still freshly remember tearing around a dirt track. Taking on jumps and bumps, sliding around a turn with one leg out to help keep myself upright, all of this and more. I remember how from the moment I got home until the sun set I was gone somewhere on my bike. The best part about being an adult is I don’t have to worry about my mother calling me home too soon. Yet the bad part about being an adult is that after a couple hours of riding like a crazed maniac I am exhausted. However it is a sweet price to pay for the feeling of once again being a kid.

Sure there are some issues with single gear mountain bikes. First off those hills that are hard with gear selection become true monsters with only one gear. Also only having one gear means that no matter how hard I pedal I am not going to get a better speed ratio from my bike. Yet I am more than willing to give these things up and not just because I get to regain some of my childhood. As a matter of fact I can think of a lot of benefits to a single gear mountain bike.

First is the obvious fact I don’t have to worry near as much about derailing issues. Since the bike only has one gear, there is no chance that the chain will derail as it switches gears. Also because everything is simpler, I have a lot less maintenance I have to worry about. Instead of making sure my gear rail is in good shape, then testing to make sure the gear cables are in working order, I can just check to make sure my tires are good, my handlebars straight and off I go. All of this is even before I consider the different challenges a single gear bike offers.

While I can’t speak for every biker on a trail, I can vouch that at least some of us enjoy the pure challenge of the sport. Now imagine that already monster hill without the benefit of gearing down to help you get to the top. Yep, you have one gear and the only way you are going to make it up that hill is to put everything you got on the line. Yet once you are up there, you know you earned it. Another challenge aspect of single geared bikes is the fact that back woods trails become even more technical. Now instead of being able to gear up or down for the demands of the trial you only have one gear and that gear is forward.

So okay maybe these kind of bikes are not for everyone. After all if we all converted to single gear bikes, engineers would be joining the unemployment lines in droves. However for those of us looking to recapture some of our childhood, or those of us looking for a different kind of challenge, the single geared mountain bike is a great answer.