OK – Surly sent me a few Knards. This is a 29×3″ tire. They’re calling it 29+ so people know there’s something extra going on here, and hopefully preventing a few “it doesn’t fit my frame!” exclamations. So, how does it fit with a Jones? Well it doesn’t fit in the rear. My bikes are designed with a short chainstay and will accommodate a large 29×2.4 tire (on a 50mm wide rim – see below) but not this 29+ tire size. Up front? It’s a different story. The Jones Truss and Unicrown forks were made for big, fat tires. As well as a ‘rear-matching’ standard 29er they’ll take a 26er fat wheel and tire (Larry, Big Fat Larry, Nate, even the 26×4.8 Bud!) and I can tell you the Knard fits perfectly. Now there are three options up front – 29, Fat 26 and 29+ – all on a 135mm front hub for a very strong wheel.

And how does the Knard ride? Well cushy ‘like a fat wheel’ but being narrower and taller it has a little more firmness to it’s cush – less of the squirm that fat tires sometimes exhibit.  I’m running them at 13psi for now and it’s a really good ride. I’m looking forward to going out on to as many of my regular ‘benchmark’ trails that the snow hasn’t reached yet and test them some more.

Also worth a mention is the 50mm Rabbit Hole rim from Surly. They are the same width as some rims I have been testing for a few years now. One of the pictures below (from 2009) shows my bike with 50mm rims front and rear. They are samples from a factory in Taiwan. I had them roll some wide rims for me in the 29 size. Surly’s Rabbit Hole rims are an excellent option. It needs saying that the aren’t *just* for Knard tires. They do wonders for a 2.4 Ardent tire too. They improve the profile and let you run lower pressures – I tend to run a 2.4 Ardent at about 21 psi on a P35 rim but the 50mm rim lets me drop my pressure to 15 or 16 psi.  Side to side tire stability is improved and more of the tread is on the ground. It’s good.

Surly have a chunk of info over on their site for tires and a blog post about the Knard and Rabbit Hole (with some diameter and tire width measurements) – well written and well worth the read.