How wide were tubs in the 1950's?

severnthheathen

Devout Dirtbag
Help please. I'm wanting to create a sprints and tubs look on a mid 1950's re-build by using 700c's and narrow tyres. Does anyone know how wide tubs were back in the day?
 
Can't help with the 50s but I would have though they would be a rather wide section then


I was running 18mm in the 80s, couldn't do that now with the state of the roads
 
47p2":2lcde4g5 said:
I was running 18mm in the 80s
18mm tubs looked the nuts but offered no grip around tight bends
and was just best left to Time Trialling! I remember crashing on the
A1 on a roundabout due running off the tread :facepalm:

Looking at old 50's racers I'd say about 30mm to 35mm!
 
I never had a problem with the 18s Ian

Maybe I didn't pedal fast enough to loose grip ;)
 
The Dunlop silks (no 5) I used in 1956/7 were no more than 1 inch inflated. These were hand made with hand mounted treads. Tubulars were mounted with minimum glue to stay on, the air pressure did most of it. Never had a tyre roll off, but cheap vulcanised tubulars were prone to rolling over.
 
Thanks Keith,
Silk tubs, I recall, were the lightest (and most expensive) and favoured for track racing or for special time trials. Since my original post I've seen an old "Continental" catalogue on Flickr which shows a selection of tubs a bit wider than 1", some as wide as 1 1/4". It might be that your high-end silks were a bit narrower than the run of the mill tubs. 47p2 above, suggested 30 to 35mm which is around the 1 1/4" mark.
This helps. I was going to go with 23mm but will now stick at 25mm for a slightly more authentic racy look. Cheers guys.
 
I'm impressed Keith. Did the team supply them or did you have to save your pocket money? I bet there weren't many in the peloton (or the breakaway) with silks :D
 
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