Tourer - 26" or 700c wheel?

[Greystoke]

So what's the future for touring bikes then? What's likely to be the standard prefered size?
I have both 26" and 700c. I'm sure I'll be able to get tyres... My mate still gets 27" tyres for his old tourer so no need for concern.

[Brucey]

So what's the future for touring bikes then? What's likely to be the standard prefered size?.....

~700x35, like it has been for about the last forty years.

cheers

[Greystoke]

I think you're right Brucey.
I think touring bikes are affected by market trends like all other bikes and we'll only be able to buy variations on mainstream bikes unless you spend a lot of money.
700c seems to have been popular on touring bikes since I had mine made in the mid 80's

[Brucey]

Other wheel sizes may come and go but that one will be with us for a while longer for sure, in Europe at least. Regarding emergency spares I'd expect to be able to get a 700C rim brake wheel (with standard sized nutted/QR axles and 9x100mm F and 10x130-135mm R spacing) easily in Europe for a good long time to come yet, because that sort of wheel is still being fitted to loads of commuting bikes.

But outside of that I think we are subject to 'divide and conquer' tactics; for decades touring bicycles benefitted from 'MTB hand-me-downs' (hubs, gears, brakes etc) but the MTB market has embarked on a dizzying whirl of changes and so-called 'new standards' that change on an almost annual basis. These 'innovations' offer the touring cyclist relatively little, except a load of problems should they require spare parts in a hurry, and looming obsolescence if they keep their bike for more than a couple of years.

FWIW I think that nailing disc brakes onto 9mm front and 10mm rear axles is always going to be a compromise (stopping them from moving around when the brakes are applied is problematic) and I don't see folk exactly queueing up to build their touring bikes with through-axles etc either. I suppose that (for now anyway) at least you have some chance of buying spare disc brake wheels in the 'old' hub format but this may well be usurped by something different in a few years too.

If you swallow the idea that somehow 650B (584 BSD) wheels are wonderful (as if five percent difference in wheel size was really a big deal.... ) then if you use disc brakes too there is some MTB hand-me down effect in that 27.5 MTB disc brake wheels might work. But fashions move on, and 27.5 wheels are less common now in MTBs than they were a few years ago and hubs are changing too. If you tour on 32 spoke disc brake wheels you may be able buy a suitable 584 rim you can build on your own hubs when you prang a wheel. But if you (say) use 36 spoke 650B rim brake wheels, you are out of luck; such rims are rare, there is hardly any choice and they can only be had mail order in the UK and (outside of France perhaps) I suspect that the same is true in most of Europe too.

So for europe I will probably be sticking with rim braked 700C wheels on my touring bike. When straying further afield than Europe, and/or tacking rough surfaces/heavy loads, 559 wheels would be a better choice.

My take on it, anyway....

cheers

[LittleGreyCat]

Getting confused again.



My Scott P4 hybrid has 37-622 tyres which seem to be both 700C and 28".
My old Dawes Galaxy has 32-622 tyres which seem to be slightly narrower and also 700C and 28".
Unless, of course, I am reading the above table incorrectly.

So I am confused by the 27.5" comments.

The Mountain Bike has 51-559 tyres which are also labelled 26 x 1.9 and a quick measure shows that they are roughly 26" diameter including the tyre.

Then again both nominally (and labelled as) 28" tyres have a rough diameter of 27".
Just cross checked and a brand new 37-622 700 x 35C from the garage also measures 27" diameter.
I am going somewhere quiet for a lie down.

[Chris Jeggo]

Thanks for your take on it, Brucey.

[meic]

Getting confused again.



My Scott P4 hybrid has 37-622 tyres which seem to be both 700C and 28".
My old Dawes Galaxy has 32-622 tyres which seem to be slightly narrower and also 700C and 28".
Unless, of course, I am reading the above table incorrectly.

So I am confused by the 27.5" comments.

The Mountain Bike has 51-559 tyres which are also labelled 26 x 1.9 and a quick measure shows that they are roughly 26" diameter including the tyre.

Then again both nominally (and labelled as) 28" tyres have a rough diameter of 27".
Just cross checked and a brand new 37-622 700 x 35C from the garage also measures 27" diameter.
I am going somewhere quiet for a lie down.

Dont try and make sense of it. The names were not arrived at in any systematic manner.
Any tyre which goes on a 630mm ETRO rim is called a 27" tyre.
Tyres which go on a 622mm ETRO rim are called either 28" (in Germany) or 29" if they are large tyres for off road use.
Even though 622mm is smaller than 630mm

[Chris Jeggo]

Getting confused again.

...

I am going somewhere quiet for a lie down.

The CUK guide to tyre sizing is here, and Sheldon Brown has something similar.

When mountain bikers started fitting fat tyres (fatter than 'C') to '700C' (i.e. ISO 622 BSD) rims they got a wheel larger than the nominal 700mm (which is about 28") so they called them 29-ers. They had previously used '26-inch' wheels (i.e. ISO 559 BSD). So when a 'new', intermediate size, 650B (ISO 584 BSD), came along they called them 27.5" so as not to confuse anbody!

Incidentally, French tourists had long been campaigning for the return of the formerly obsolete 650B wheel and tyre.

[Brucey]

Incidentally, French tourists had long been campaigning for the return of the formerly obsolete 650B wheel and tyre.

it has never been entirely 'obsolete' in the UK; it is 26 x 1-1/2" and there are many thousands of bikes trundling around on those tyres. The size was invented in Britain in the first decade of the twentieth century and GPO used nothing else for about 50 years. Just because the French pinched the rim dimensions and gave it a silly name doesn't make it anything special. There are several bike shops near me that stock (boring run of the mill) roadster tyres in this size but finding rims is more difficult. 32H disc rims are available (at a price) and steel westwood rims can be had too. Anything else is a bit trickier.

cheers

[Brucey]

I'll double-check how the size of these bits is referred to; I have a set and I just use the one that fits. Note that there are tri-square and bi-hex versions of 12pt spline bits; you need the latter really but the former can also fit at a pinch



cheers

further to the above at least one of the tools I have been using is an M14 spline bit, which appears to be a tri-square design, not a bi-hex. I shall look at the others when I get a chance.

cheers

[thelawnet]

of course you can get '26"' tyres that are well over 31"....

https://www.schwalbe.com/en/offroad-rea ... o-jim.html

[LittleGreyCat]

Just a brief addition to my conundrum.

Riding out on Wednesday with a local group and I was almost alongside a friend on a hybrid with 700C wheels.
He ran over a hole in the mucky little back rode we were on and wrecked the rear tube; around the same time he ran over a twig with the front wheel and that punctured the tube. Me on my 26" wheels with 1.9" tyres (slight tread for road use) - no problems.

Now I'm not saying that this proves 26" wheels with bigger tyres are better, because all but one of the rest of the group were on 700Cs, but I have never so far had a puncture on my big fat tyres but in the past I have dented a rim on a 700C.

So today I am swinging back to the 26" wheel. Then again I am sure that the 700C rim could have taken a chunkier tyre.

[meic]

I have never so far had a puncture on my big fat tyres but in the past I have dented a rim on a 700C.

Your sample size is of course much too small.
I have about the same ratio of punctures in fat 26" as thin 700C.
Dinted rims are more common with 700C because 700C more commonly use thin tyres where high pressure is essential and can be down quite quickly without you realising before you hit that little edge on the road with an unprotected rim.

[cycle tramp]

Having just seen Yostumpy's tourer (in the tea shop, pictures of your bike) why not have both sizes? Yostumpy's tourer uses disc brakes and there's photos of it with 700C, 559 and 650b sized wheels. So i'm guessing that providing the hubs and disc size & spacing remains constant then you can run any type of rim & tyre combination (providing theres frame clearance)...
...i guess that means your tourer could have 559 tyres and rims for autumn & winter seasons and 700C for the friendlier summer months.....cool

[Brian73]

I ride these:

I prefer the 26 inch as it is more nimble around town, but the 700c does roll faster. Before you splash out buy something old and second had to try them out.

Raleigh Pioneer 4130 Cr Mo frame 700x35c with a compact Acera chainset 22 32 42 with a 12-28 7 speed cassette.



Dawes Reynolds 500 Cr Mo MTB 26x1.95 with a 28 38 48 Chainet and 12-32 7 speed cassette.