29er VS. Coker

oh boy another 36er 29er war!? there are many threads on this. everyone
knows where i stand so im not even going to start the battle.

maybe somone knows the links to the 10 or more thread battles on this
issue and can post them since its all going to read the same as new
posts here.

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a coker is faster, but a 29er is easier to control. though with practice
you can control a coker pretty easily too. if you're going to be riding
through tight/crowded areas, a 29er is better....other than that, a
coker is superior.
in my not so humble opinion.

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29er vs Coker is the eternal question...

I know that what I really want is a Coker with a Stockton wheel and a
Hunter frame--but my current financial situation does not allow that. I
can't even afford to get a stock Coker at the moment, and the same is
true of the 29ers available at UDC.

But, because I came to the realization that I really liked long-distance
unicycling, and my 26er was not cutting it as far as distance was
concerned, I opted for a long-term intermediary solution--I picked up an
inexpensive Sun 28er, and transferred the KH saddle, crank arms and
pedals from my 26er to the Sun. I replaced the stock tire with a much
better Michelin Trans World City tire. Despite its cheap price (and
reputation--anytime someone mentions the 28 Sun, there is always a
[censored] unicycler posting some story of their unicycle falling apart)
despite what people may think, the Sun I have totally rolls over those
distances with ease--in fact, today, for the first time, I did five
miles with only 1 stop--and when I got to my destination, I was ready
for more!

I think there is a huge divide between the distance unicycles (cokers
and 29ers) and the local unicycles (24inchers and below)--the Sun 28er
is already proving to be highly valuable in examining the question of my
next purchase--coker or 29er. I like the compactness of the 29er, but
the speed and substantial weight factor of the coker make that option
highly desirable as well. And yet, the 29er in of itself can handle the
distances, but the coker sits you high at the speed of bikers...

With the Sun 28er, I can keep up with the 29ers and the Cokerers while I
wait for my bank account to ultimately decide my options. And who knows,
maybe I'll stay with the 28er anyway...

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dogbowl said:

*29er vs Coker is the eternal question...
....blablabla I have a 28er blablabla.... etc.*

and also, don't the 29er's and 28er's have the same rim size, just the
29er has a bigger tire? I heard that somewhere. so if that's true, you
can buy a cheapo 28er, and just upgrade the tire later when you have the
money. or maybe money is not a problem for you, you didn't actually say
that, I'm just kind of assuming....

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-"I do mostly just street riding between 6 and 7 miles, allthough I want
to ocasionly do a longer ride."-

My 2 cents is that for local street rides, where there may be traffic,
starts / stops go with the 29er.

For long distance cruising the Coker, all the way.

I too ride mainly streets and decided on the 29" due to local traffic,
hills, etc. - and I wanted a little more maneuverablity.

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heavy metal unicycling said:

*I am thinking about getting a distance uni, but am not sure what
kind. I have been using a 24 inch and am going to upgrade. I do mostly
just street riding between 6 and 7 miles, allthough I want to
ocasionly do a longer ride. Basically my question is what are the pros
and cons of 29ers and Cokers, and wich one do you guys (and girls)
think would be best for my situation? Thanks! *

Do you ride those sort of distances daily or ride to work? If so, just
get a coker, you'll get used to it pretty quickly and you'll soon be
riding it like normal people ride a 29er. If you don't ride so
frequently, you might want to consider a 29er.

If you do work less than 10 miles away, consider starting riding to
work, it's the only way to become a really good distance rider.

Joe

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joemarshall said:

heavy metal unicycling said:

*I am thinking about getting a distance uni, but am not sure what
kind. I have been using a 24 inch and am going to upgrade. I do mostly
just street riding between 6 and 7 miles, allthough I want to
ocasionly do a longer ride. Basically my question is what are the pros
and cons of 29ers and Cokers, and wich one do you guys (and girls)
think would be best for my situation? Thanks! *

Do you ride those sort of distances daily or ride to work? If so, just
get a coker, you'll get used to it pretty quickly and you'll soon be
riding it like normal people ride a 29er. If you don't ride so
frequently, you might want to consider a 29er.

I just borrowed a friend's 29er for a while to see what getting to work
would be like on one. It's about 3 - 4 miles and I've only ever ridden
20" unis except for the odd go on 24s, a 29er for a game of hockey and
about 200m on a coker.

I rode into work yesterday and did feel I wanted (and could) go faster
so will be angling to try it on a coker when I get a bit more used to
the 29er. The caveat is of course that I am still only a beginner on the
29 and the route I usually take on my bike is probably more suited to a
29 because it there is a lot of stop-start. I am hoping to improve my
time quite a bit when I get used to riding and mounting.

The more direct route involves more hilly riding, but crikey the hills
don't half feel easier than on a bike. These are mild hills in town I'm
talking about rather than proper steep ones...

The thing that really slowed me down though was being stopped by two
seperate people to have a chat about unis 🙂

So... in conclusion: listen to Joe, he knows what he's talking about.
Borrow a 29er and a coker to have a go and see which you like best.

heavy metal unicycling said:

*Basically my question is what are the pros and cons of 29ers and
Cokers, and wich one do you guys (and girls) think would be best for
my situation? Thanks! *

I bought a cheap 28" uni while I wait for the coker I ordered to be
delivered. (It's now been a little over 2 months.) I ride it with the
local guys who have cokers. Because I have very small cranks, I can go
pretty fast. With 102mm cranks, I have hit 15.8 mph, and can average
wll over 9 mph rides over 10 miles in hilly neighborhood courses. I
have ridden my riding partners' cokers just a little. A coker with
similar cranks would scare me in the neighborhoods. Or perhaps I would
scrare myself. (The plastic bubble which protects me might break.)

Quoted message said:

-Originally posted by james_potter-
*a coker is faster, but a 29er is easier to control. though with
practice you can control a coker pretty easily too. if you're going to
be riding through tight/crowded areas, a 29er is better....other than
that, a coker is superior.
in my not so humble opinion.*

I believe that a cheap 28" (a Sun) with 102s is not necessarily much
easier to control than a coker with longer cranks at higher speeds. And
we don't really buy these wheels to ride slow, do we? One of the
cokeurs I ride with uses 125s and another 150s, I think. Because the
28" has such a light weight wheel, it feels flimsy and is prone to
wobble at higher speeds. It's still pretty stable at 10-12 mph. I have
to be pretty careful at speeds above that. I believe the extra coker
wheel weight would help with that problem. So, riding slow, you might
have more control. Riding fast, probably less.

Quoted message said:

-Originally posted by dogbowl-
*I know that what I really want is a Coker with a Stockton wheel and a
Hunter frame--but my current financial situation does not allow that.
I can't even afford to get a stock Coker at the moment, and the same
is true of the 29ers available at UDC.*

This is the configuration I ordered, and it takes a *loooong* time to
deliver. (You don't want to know, and I don't want to say.) If you
want to ride any time soon, go buy something off the shelf. Some custom
frames seem to be turned around much more quickly than others, so I
recommend that you research that aspect if it matters to you. My advice
is, if you're going to wait anyway, get what you want and live with the
wait.

I hear the product is worth the wait -- and I'm dying to find out. But
my interim solution was to buy a very cheap 28" and be happy knowing
that in a few months I get to ride a really nice custom unicycle. I
borrowed a seat for the 28", but I will probably buy one. And I
recommend spending extra money for nice pedals. So, for around $150,
you can have a cheap 28" Sun -- -do no drops at all --- to ride while
you wait.

Alternatively, there is a very good post by One on one and others in a
recent thread on building your own ultra strong coker wheel. I'm not up
to that yet, but you might be.

Good luck.

--
munipsycho - Sometimes I fall down.

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munipsycho said:

*I believe that a cheap 28" (a Sun) with 102s is not necessarily much
easier to control than a coker with longer cranks at higher speeds.
And we don't really buy these wheels to ride slow, do we? One of the
cokeurs I ride with uses 125s and another 150s, I think. Because the
28" has such a light weight wheel, it feels flimsy and is prone to
wobble at higher speeds. It's still pretty stable at 10-12 mph. I
have to be pretty careful at speeds above that. I believe the extra
coker wheel weight would help with that problem. So, riding slow, you
might have more control. Riding fast, probably less.*

that's true, but the reason I think the coker is harder to control isn't
exactly because of the wobbliness. it's actually kind of because of the
lack of wobbliness, due to the heavy rim which keeps the wheel spinning
faster. makes it harder to start going, harder to stop going, harder to
change direction or speed quickly....just because of the extra momentum
from the heavy steel rim.

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I think JP and I agree that a smaller wheel with equivalent cranks is
more maneuverable, especially at lower speeds.

It will be more difficult to decelerate on a larger, heavier wheel,
again assuming equivalent crank lengths.

At a high speed, the heavier wheel should be more stable.

That right, JP?

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munipsycho said:

*I think JP and I agree that a smaller wheel with equivalent cranks is
more maneuverable, especially at lower speeds.
It will be more difficult to decelerate on a larger, heavier wheel,
again assuming equivalent crank lengths.
At a high speed, the heavier wheel should be more stable.
That right, JP? *

eeexactly. the coker is definitely more stable, but if you're riding up
to a street corner and a biker suddenly comes around the other side, you
can't slow down fast enough to avoid collision. of course depending how
far away you are....and also, if you try to slow down quickly, this
often results in a UPD. and a coker UPD in a crowded area is often a
very bad thing, because the coker can go on it's own for a while....

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I waited a year for my big wheel (Tommy Miller).

Yes, 28" and 29" unicycles both use the same rim size. The rim size is
700c, which I hope to get unicyclists to start using as a size instead,
to make life a little less complicated. Also it's a new (optional)
racing category in the IUF rules.

So you can have a 700c rim with like a road bike tire on there, very
narrow and light (and small diameter). Or you can have a Big Apple
(basically a balloon) tire on there, for greater weight, but much larger
diameter and also nice cruising over bumps. That's what I use when I
road-ride my 29er.

If your purpose is to get from place to place, start with a Coker and
work your way down from there if you have to. The two main disadvantages
of the Coker are it size, which makes it harder to store or transport,
and its relative sluggishness. So yes, if you have to ride in crowded
city streets with lots of stopping, you may be more comfortable on a
29er.

But the Coker is going to be faster in almost all situations. Even if
you ride it slower, you will still use less energy than someone pedaling
faster on a smaller wheel.

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All this talk has made me start wondering again. Maybe it's time to pull
my 700c wheeled unicycle out and start riding it again while I
comtemplate selling my custom Coker😕

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Regarding control on a Coker.
I have tried different cranks sizes from the stock 150mm to 89mm and
discovered 110mm(4.5inch) crank is best in distance and control.
Unicycledotcom has these new QU-AX 110mm that are light and strong, I
LUV EM! 😄
Also having a KH bumper helps with control while "trying" to freestyle
on a Coker. 🙄
I have sold all my uni and now joined the ranks of Cokerheads!
I weave around people at the local mall area and have not trouble w/
stopping. On distance riding, the heavier Coker does give more
stability.

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munipsycho said:

* Because the 28" has such a light weight wheel, it feels flimsy and
is prone to wobble at higher speeds.
*

One of the things I have come to like about the Sun 28er is its light,
flimsy feel--in many ways, I have more control over it than my heavier
26er with the Yuni frame. There is a certain give and take that is
pretty nice.
munipsycho wrote:*

Quoted message said:

I borrowed a seat for the 28", but I will probably buy one. And I
recommend spending extra money for nice pedals. So, for around $150,
you can have a cheap 28" Sun -- -do no drops at all --- to ride while
you wait.
*

As soon as I got my Sun 28er I transferred the KH seat, my Nimbus X
crank arms, and my amuminum pinned muni pedals from my 26er to the 28er.
I also got a new tire for it--a Michelin Transworld City 700 X 47c--I
was experiencing a fair amount of leftward drifting road crown hugging
with the stock street tire , but with the Michelin, I ride as straight
as an arrow.

James_Potter said:

*and also, don't the 29er's and 28er's have the same rim size, just
the 29er has a bigger tire? I heard that somewhere. so if that's true,
you can buy a cheapo 28er, and just upgrade the tire later .... *

A drawback to the Sun 28er is that the frame can't accomidate a tire as
fat as, say the Big Apple. That's not a problem for me because I don't
ride well on Big Apples, but still, I would like to find a nice big fat
700c tire (one with a flat surface, Hoggy-like) that would fit the Sun28
frame—the michelin is a bit bigger than the stock, and it rides
really well, but I'm keeping my eyes open for something bigger.

johnfoss said:

*
But the Coker is going to be faster in almost all situations. Even if
you ride it slower, you will still use less energy than someone
pedaling faster on a smaller wheel. *

That was a nice thing to discover about going up from a 26er to the
28er—you really save energy when riding slow. Its almost the same
as stopping and resting. In the past, where I would have jumped off to
take a breather, I now just ride slower. One of the nicer things about a
bigger wheel—I'm sure its even better on a Coker.

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Just to toss in my small change...

I've only had the briefest of goes on a Coker, and it felt huge and
monsterous, which has its upsides in certain ways. I then bought a
Nimbus 29er with a Big Apple and 125 cranks. This I've used for lots of
road riding, and though it's not as fast as it could be on long, flat
roads, it doesn't frustrate me much of the time.

I rode 103 miles on it in a day earlier this week, which was satisfying
(Bath to London, on the A4), with average rolling speed of 11.5mph
Maybe I'm just masochistically disinclined to bother with minor changes
to stock supplied setups, believing that the biggest difference is
likely to be a PMA and a good supply of water and Jelly Babies rather
than any 10% tweak on the machine. At numerous urban junctions and
traffic lights I was glad to have the leverage of relatively non-short
cranks.

A UDC Nimbus 29er is certainly lightweight. Really. When I first got
it I lent my 24 muni to a friend, and when I got the muni back after 5
weeks of exclusively 29er riding, I picked up the muni and it felt heavy
like a cast-iron tank. Under 6kg or something absurd.

I wouldn't fancy the annoyed looks from others on the Tube if I had a
full sized Coker. The 29er was quite large enough to hold still and try
to look nonchalant.

So yes, 29ers are great. You can go everywhere on them. Not
supersonic, but they are still fast. And I've yet to see a Coker rim
come in shiny red.

Sam

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redwelly said:

*
I rode 103 miles on it in a day earlier this week, which was
satisfying (Bath to London, on the A4), with average rolling speed of
11.5mph.*

103 miles in a day! Cor. 'This was you then, I presume...'
(http://tinyurl.com/dbeka) 🙂

Phil

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redwelly said:

*I've only had the briefest of goes on a Coker, and it felt huge and
monsterous*

It's a beast! And there's nothing else like it! And since it hasn't
been said yet on this particular thread...

Coker, Coker, Coker!

Long cranks take most of the "Coker-ness" out of a Coker. I just put my
suuuuper-long 175s back on. They really help with quick starts and
stops and weaving through pedestrians on the sidewalk. But out on the
"open road", you can still go fast (well, if I were a GOOD Coker rider I
could go fast, in spite of the long cranks).

And as I've said before, if you want a nimble, maneuverable unicycle to
replace your lumbering, hard-to-turn Mack truck Coker, then simply
practice (I've been inspired by the Coker riding finesse of Joe Merrill,
HardcoreCokerRider, Brian MacKenzie, and shadowuni).

redwelly said:

*I wouldn't fancy the annoyed looks from others on the Tube if I had a
full sized Coker. The 29er was quite large enough to hold still and
try to look nonchalant.*

I once cared about that, too. But after doing some MUni with Jeff Prosa
in Central Park in NYC, I had my first subway-ride-with-unicycle. Jeff
pointed out a lady with a baby carraige on the subway. The baby
carraige took up more room than a Coker. So, just tell them that it's
your baby. You have a right to be there. And they have a right to be
annoyed. To each his own.

--
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Phil: yes, it was probably me. I was wondering if anyone would have
spotted me. It would be further ammusing to hear the reaction of
someone who knows where I live, if they had seen me riding so far from
home.

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