Wildwood 

So I’m not sure if these tires (just stretching on a newly acquired set of wheels) are best choice aesthetically.
edit: perhaps it’s the green vinyl hbar tape, or the tires are too clean?!?
Help me out with a few PICTURES of your vintage steel where tanwalls weren’t quite the right fit.





72 or 73 Bottecchia Giro d Italia. Mostly original. New hoods, NR rd, saddle swap, consumables. This wheelset has high flange hubs and tubular rims to replace the clinchers adopted by the original owner (stated he hated gluing).

cdmurphy

They'll look better once you get some dirt on them :-). Also, if Veloflex tubulars don't look right, the correct fix is to change the bike until they do. :-)

capnjonny 

Don't have any pics. I love tan walls but they need to be color coordinated. Black and tan, Hunter green and tan, Russo red and tan , White and tan(not so much, depends on the white.) Brown and tan, Gold and tan. Blue and tan , I have used all of the above combinations. Don't forget all the other components in your color pallette either. Black bars stem, brakes etc with with red , I just built up an old Raleigh Sprite in a very military green and used Yellow brake cables and a black shift cable . It looks great

Bianchigirll 

The tires could use a little dust on them. I think if the bar tape, saddle and toe straps matched it would look much better.

BTW a freewheel would be a really good addition too

chainstay

That bike is hawt.

BFisher

Sold this one a while back. Not that tan sidewalls wouldn't have worked, but I thought with the black saddle and hoods - black tires too.
Not sure if this helps. Great looking bike, btw.

Fahrenheit531 

Yes. Yes I have.

Trakhak

In the era when the pictured bikes were new, only the cheapest of cheap bikes came with all-black tires. I find the look of all-black tires on a nice vintage bike more jarring than a sloping top tube on a modern bike.

delbiker1 

With the frame color they work well. Panaracer Paselas
Recently finished rebuild, early 90s Ochsner. I am going to mount one of the tires on a black rim and mount that on the bike just to see how it looks like that. I bought the wheels used and they are the ones that will stay on the bike either way. I did not like the looks of black wheels and black tires.

Kactus

You have to go with tan sidewalls, anything else is just... wrong!

tkamd73 

Yes! Thats why non of my bikes have them. Very nice bike though, would look better with black walls, due to the light silver frame color. Or as others have said, just get them dirty, which tends to darken them.
Tim

Nguyen Dang

My suggestion is to change bar tape to white or black!

RiddleOfSteel

I think the tan wall tires look GREAT! The green tape, as you have pointed out, is distracting from a very lovely composition. Beautiful Bottecchia BTW.

I did some photoshopping of black, white, and matching(ish) brown bar tape, to show what could be possible. They all look good in their own way, though I like the black because it matches the saddle. Let the saturated colors exist without visual "competition" on this bike at least IMO. What do you think?

Salamandrine 

Yeah, it is just wrong on a vintage classic. Black wall tires only came on cheap bikes like Huffys and department store 3 speeds. Black walls meant gum walls, and that meant thick, heavy, slow rolling tires. No one would have been caught dead riding all black tires on anything approaching a good bike BITD.

I have to say that I do prefer modern black tires on my modern but classic Mercian.

Wildwood 

Yes, that would look so traditionally classic. I'm so non-standard, that it needs a touch of quirkiness in a way. Call it my Ugly Betty Syndrome manifestation.

Thanks for noticing the lack of freewheel, still trying to perfect an adult, racing, drop handlebar, none-speed bike.

tkamd73 

The tan sidewalls definitely did not work with this Gitane Defi, had to go with Blackwalls. Actually the Gatorskins have a dark brown sidewall, which thankfully, looks black in photos.
Tim

Wildwood 

Thanks, @RiddleOfSteel. I think brown tape wins it - for the complimentation with new hoods. Black on other bikes in the collection.

I also forgot to say = The green vinyl had to go on some bike, some time!?!

@Kactus - great examples. I can see the Moto is black. And your silver rims are lovely, most of mine seem to be dark anodized - making this newtome silver wheelset a little special.


Thanks to all for contributions -

More pics of the Misfit Tanwalls

SamSpade1941 

I really like the aesthetic of brown or tan wall tires , I do not know if they match every build, but I think they make a nice compliment to most bikes.

Wildwood 

+1.
and very nicely executed...

RiddleOfSteel

I think the '80s was where the tan wall / black wall thinking changed, not just because tire technology changed, but also bike and component color and design. It allowed for fully black tires to look perfectly at home on a high-end machine, and that continues today. With the advent and advancement of carbon and disc wheels, that all-black/dark rim (a la MA40 et al) allows tan walls to come back and greatly enhance the look of a bike, especially in the All Black Every Day fashion of today's high-end machines.

tkamd73 

Thanks Wildwood, very nice Bottecchia, it’s gonna look good whichever way you go.
Tim

Lemond1985

Got "stuck" with these white DT Swiss rims when I bought my BMC. They never looked quite right on that bike. Or any bike, FWIW, don't ever buy white rims.

So they've gone from bike to bike, never looking right on anything. So I hit on the idea of getting tan sidewall Paselas and putting the wheels on my Raleigh Competition. I think these wheels have finally found a home, in the most unexpected of places. Something about the tan and white just "works", at least for me, YMMV.

Wildwood 

That's as close to a fact as I'll confirm in tire selection.

But for black, try the Spec Turbo Pro tubular (or whatever they call it now) - I have 3yo version in 24mm = heavenly for a race type tire. IIRC, current version is 26mm.

randyjawa 

When building my PX10 there was little cash available for purchasing much of anything for the bike (got it for a very low price). I was very fortunate when a fellow forum member offered me a set of brand new tubulars. Sadly, or so I thought, they were black walls and I am a gum walls fan for my old bikes.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the look seemed to work on my Peugeot...


But, thanks to some gum wall tires that shredded themselves in Jamaica last winter, I was forced to go with black walls and much larger air volume. Once again, totally surprised at how good the tires looked on my early eighties Bianchi. Not only that, but the ride is nicer, in a comfort not performance kinda way. Anyway, same bike with gum and black walls...

ridelikeaturtle

This bike is fantastic, nothing wrong with that at all! The brake hoods, toe straps, and tan sidewalls are nicely complementary to chrome and the green bar tape; the black saddle works with the black on the tyres and cables. Black and chrome can work well together if evenly distributed.

Just to me the saddle looks a cm or two too far forward, but if that fitment works for you then nevermind me. And otherwise, I think the colors all work together beautifully. Nice job!

(Not sure what's going on with the chain....)