The news on 650B continues to roll in. New tires, rims, wheels and bikes have all been announced.

In our own news:

650-5.jpg

The 650B Heckler (code name: Beckler) is built and rolling, and things are starting to dry up finally, so expect a real ride report soon. The White Brothers 130 thru axle fork is installed now and the bike it ready to ride, and the trails are ready to go now too. If my math is correct the rear travel is right at 120, we might be able to eek out 5-10mm of travel. Stay tuned!

650-15.jpg


Tires

Kenda has announced a 650B version of the ever popular Nevegal, in both 2.35 and 2.1 sizes. A mid-summer release date is planned. Read more about it here.

Rims

Sun Ringle’s Equalizer 27 rim should avaliable in 650B as I write this. See the Hayes Bicycle Group blog for more details.

Wheels

American Classic has wheelsets built up around the No Tubes 650B rim mentioned in this blog post.

Industry Nine has 2 wheelset avaliable, both using their proprietry hubs and spokes. The lightweight version uses the ZTR 355 rim and the Enduro version uses the Velocity Blunt. Nothing on their website yet.

Bikes

Haro has pulled the trigger on TWO 650B Bikes for 2009. See Haro’s product manager Jill Hamilton’s blog (here and here) for more info.

Other stuff

Kirk Pacenti passed on news from the Taipei Bike Show. 2 of the major suspension fork manufactures will have 650B compatible forks in the coming years. It looks like they will be a shared platform with the 26″ wheel size, which is great news for 650B.

If most manufactures start designing forks to use either 26″ or 650B wheels the fork selection will skyrocket quickly.