Rob English on Building a Stunning 32-Inch Mountain Bike

Rewind more than 20 years—to when mountain bikes had 26” wheels—and there was a lot of skepticism about the repurposing of the 700C wheel size as a 29” MTB wheel. I designed a prototype 29er in 2005 and discovered that, despite concerns that the “big” wheels would be slower for technical riding, for me at least, they were measurably quicker on my local singletrack.

Return to the current day, and most mountain bikes now run 29” wheels. So, there is a bit of deja vu about all the chatter around the possibility of 32-inch-wheeled bikes. I have always ridden fully rigid mountain bikes, which means I can make comparisons without worrying about the input of suspension or potential fit issues with the height of a 32” suspension fork.

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On Wednesday nights during the summer here in Oregon, a group of us ride a fun trail, all singletrack climbing, and then back down the same way. The climb is technically and physically demanding, with many root-and-rock steps that require control, balance, and power. I have not managed to do the whole way up without dabbing. My hope is that the larger wheel diameter will help with preventing the stall-out that can happen on those steps, and then make those same steps/drops feel less wheel-swallowing on the way down.

To test this theory, I needed a bike. My goal was to keep the geometry as close as possible to my current bike, except with a slightly higher bottom bracket, as I get a bit too much pedal strike. The riding position remains the same, the chainstays are slightly longer to fit the wheel, and the front center is proportionally longer to maintain the weight distribution. The headtube angle and trail are the same. With the geometry worked out, I then needed to join the dots. I liked the visual of a straight line from the headtube to the dropouts, and managed to make that work with enough room in the mainframe for two bottles and a small framebag. I’m fairly new to running a dropper post and have found that a short amount of drop works well for me, so I can still use the saddle for input. I designed around the OneUp post with 90mm of travel.

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The chainstays are at 440mm, which was about as short as sensible to leave clearance behind the BSA BB shell. I wanted to use a 52mm chainline in order not to compromise the chain angle in the lower gears, which didn’t leave a lot of room for the chainstays and the 2.4” tire. But a bit of creative tube shaping made it work without resorting to a flat yoke of some sort. The seatstays had to bend down a bit for brake caliper clearance, then at the other end, they flow into the top tube, which provided nice, straightforward internal routing for the brake hose and gear cable.

The fork is, of course, longer, so a truss construction makes good sense for an efficient structure that better distributes loading to the headtube. I integrated the stem into the fork to help maximize the headtube length. And added some bottle bosses because I tend to ride to the trail and need extra capacity.

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I’ll have to wait for the trails to dry out for some proper testing; on a couple of initial short rides, it feels just like normal, but the visual of so much wheel sticking out in front is striking! I am 5’9” tall, and I think it will be challenging to fit this wheel size to a rider much shorter—getting buzzed by the rear tire could become an issue (and might be for me; it remains to be seen). And as suspension forks become available in this size, the bar height will get pretty tall. With more tire options coming, it looks like the 32” bike will have a definite niche. My feeling is that it will be an option for taller riders rather than being a repeat of the takeover we experienced with the shift from 26” to 29” wheels, but we’ll see!

English 32er Build Kit

• Frame: English Custom, BSA BB, 148 rear spacing
• Fork: English Custom Truss with integrated stem
• Crankset: Cane Creek eeWings 170mm
• Chainring: Garbaruk 30T
• Derailleur: Madrone JAB
• Shifter: SRAM GX gripshift
• Cassette: Garbaruk 10-52T
• Chain: SRAM Eagle
• Bottom Bracket: Wolf Tooth BSA30
• Rims: Nextie carbon
• Spokes: Berd
• Tires: Maxxis Aspen 32 x 2.4″
• Hubs: Onyx Racing hook-flange, 12×148, 12×110
• Headset: Industry 9 EC34 upper x2
• Handlebar: FSA KFX
• Grips: Ergon
• Saddle: Tioga Spyder carbon
• Seatpost: OneUp V3 dropper, 27.2, 90mm
• Dropper Lever: Hacked LH gripshift
• Brakes: Shimano XT
• Bottle Cages: Silca titanium
• Framebag: Kaibab Customs (bolt-on)
• Pedals: Shimano XTR
• Total Weight: 22.9 pounds

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You can see more from Rob at EnglishCycles.com.

Further Reading

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