highlandsflyer
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Let's not forget trouser or skirt fit.+ Tyre.
Let's not forget trouser or skirt fit.+ Tyre.
Agree and probably a reflection on the improvement in road quality from the 70's to the 90's. My Ellis Briggs is running 700 x 32 and I could probably squeeze 35's in there if I deflate them to remove/mount. If I could convert to Mafac Racers I could probably run those 35's without deflating to mount/remove.tyre clearance is pretty much a fashion thing I think
many older bikes had pretty good clearance (maybe not modern 'gravel' widths) then in the 90s everything got tighter and you couldn't get more than a 25c through the brakes on most road bikes
my 1984 peugeot (supposedly a racer) can do 32c with guards with quite a lot of room to spare. Chain stays are the limiting factor rather than brakes or fork clearance - you could maybe get a 35c in there if you took the dropout set screws out and rammed the wheel as far back is it would go. The dimples in the chainstays are kinda odd in that they almost look like they were designed for a smaller wheel size (eg if I ran a 27.5 there would be gobs of room)
If it had been a late 80s or 90s model no chance.
Agree and probably a reflection on the improvement in road quality from the 70's to the 90's. My Ellis Briggs is running 700 x 32 and I could probably squeeze 35's in there if I deflate them to remove/mount. If I could convert to Mafac Racers I could probably run those 35's without deflating to mount/remove.
I may be naive, but I think the tire width thing is with us now unless new research debunks the fatter, low pressure tire is faster evidence of the past few years.
Agreed. My only observation is that modern long reach dual pivot brakes are significantly better than vintage medium reach single pivots so you can still get a tire width and braking performance improvement by upgrading a vintage sport touring bike to 700c or 650b with long reach Tektros.Older tourers/club sport bikes had tyre clearance -
27x1&1/4 was such a common size up to the 1980s
That's 32mm,
leave some space for huge chrome mudguards, drop the wheel size from 630 to 622 and you've usually got room for a 700x37
(& a work around for the guards)
The trouble is, the longer the drop of the brake arms, the weaker the brakes.
Simple.
- so one reason a sportier bike was built for narrower tyres was in order to get better braking.
Cantis almost fixed that, but didn't penetrate the racing world, (excluding CX, which is for weirdos anyway) so weren't desirable on status bikes
Disc brakes carried braking power and status, so now we can have fat tyres again
It took over 10 years though from discs' requirement on mtbs to pass via tourers into the racing world.
The Trickle-Up effect