Seem to be some concern about the bikes handling abilities with the higher bottom bracket. Compared with my other rock hopper it is three quarters of an inch to an inch higher. Doesn’t seem like that will cause poor handling but I guess we will see.
by Environmental_Slice6
3 Comments
I’m gonna guess it’s about an inch or 25mm, a difference of 5mm is where I start to notice a difference, 10mm is the limit on what I’d do, 20mm and I’d call that way too far out for me to entertain. Just for reference, when we say a mountain bike has a low bb, it’s usually 5-8mm lower than one with a high bb.
It won’t cause the bike to be a poor riding bike, but it could be a better riding bike. You will have decreased your standover clearance and the bike will be less stable over rough stuff, and feel like it may want to dump over in a corner as your center of mass has been raised and your body is cantilevered out further from the contact patch of the tires. You’re likely going to notice the trail and steering affected much more than the bb height.
Tldr: 20 to 25mm of bottom bracket change is huge but it’s just a bike, not a rocketship (also it’s a shitty old bike with shitty old geo, do whatever you want if you’re having fun).
I converted a 26“ gt karakoram to 29+ and put in a selfmade ~450 AC fork.
so the bb went up for atleast 3-4 cm maybe more (more than 1 1/2 inch)
sure the first week it was a bit weird but really didn‘t took long to get used to it.
i use it for easy trails and think it is very stable over rough stuff. i noticed the position of your body is much more important! the conversion really made my bike unique in both apperance and drivestyle
I don’t think it’ll be too noticeable on street or easy gravel. I don’t notice a huge difference on tarmac between a road and track bike in terms of handling once you get it up to speed. Granted that’s probably more like a 10mm difference. It will probably be extremely noticeable off road at slower speeds and climbing will probably feel treacherous