truthseeker14

I know this has been brought up before, but availability probably changes every year, with or without supply chain issues. I'm looking for a wide 27" tire for commuting. I have to hop a number of nasty curbs, and my 27 x 1 1/4" continental tour rides don't seem up to the task. I've seen that Kenda still makes a couple of 1 3/8" wide tires. Anyone know of 27", 38 mm wide tires? A salesman at a LBS thought there might be more 27" tire varieties in the future, but I think he was just speculating.

dickbandit 

The Swift Tire sand canyon has a stated width of 1 3/8”. Currently available here: https://www.swifttire.com/

albrt 

I've tried two types of Kenda 27 x1 3/8 tires, the K40 and the K161. They were fine for the price and provide a decent vintage look, but I did not feel like they provided any riding advantage over a fully inflated 1 1/4 Pasela.

Kabuki12

I have a set of Michelin ProTek tires mounted on 27” x 1 1/4” wienman rims . When fully inflated they check 1.390” with my calipers. They are a bit heavy but ride ok. Any tire that large isn’t going to be light. The Kenda tires that I have tried have failed on me after about a year and these have been on my Mondia for a few years . Granted it is not a bike I ride very often but the tires are still healthy and true, unlike older Kenda tires that I had.

Kabuki12

They barely fit the bike and I had to use the lever release in addition to the hanger release to remove the wheel.

oneclick 

The Kenda 184 is 27x1 3/8", I got a few recently from that auction site and put them on bikes and they looked quite big.

kingsting

Vittoria Zaffiro is the chunkiest 27 x 1-1/4" tire I've ever seen. Fatter than some 38C hybrid tires!

ClydeClydeson

There is approximately ZERO chance of this happening, unless he was referring to their shop having one style today and that they might have two or three styles later in the summer. 27" is an obsolete size and manufacturers are not putting any effort into making new styles beyond what is already available.

All that being said, there are excellent tires available, but they are almost all 27X1-1/4 (approx. 32mm) 0r 1-3/8 (35mm) or narrower.

However, I am a bigger person and I have been using 700x35mm tires for some very demanding riding for many years. Perhaps you need to bring up your tire pressure to deal with whatever obstacles you encounter.

Another option is to switch your rims to the modern standard 700C size, for which there are hundreds of tire choices, and which will give you a couple mm more space for wider tires in your frame and fork. THe swap is relatively easy if your brake pads have room to adjust 4mm down from where they are now. This suggestion might be heresy for vintage bicycle purists (because your bike originally came with 27" wheels, not because 700C wheels wouldn't have been available when the bike was made) but it makes a lot of sense for a bike you are willing to put some effort into and that is destined to be ridden daily and not intended as a showpiece in a collection.

truthseeker14

Ha ha. Actually I bought a vintage bike that took 27" tires on purpose. I wanted to go loaded touring on my Soma Doublecross Disk but it only had 24 spokes per wheel and I realized that may not be enough for touring, and I figured for the price of a new wheel set, I could buy a vintage touring bike that had plenty of spokes. And this is what I did. (Bridgestone T-700 from 1985, 40 spokes rear, 36 front). Plus I always loved the classic look of bikes from the 70s and 80s. I could always put fatter 700c tires on my Soma for commuting but the rim is pretty narrow (18 mm, I think). I've heard different opinions on putting fatter tires on narrow rims.

dddd

I don't know of any 1-3/8" tire that is wider than the Pasela 1-1/4" tire. The cheaper Asian 1-3/8" tires are narrower than the 1-1/4" Pasela.

Michelin I believe makes the widest 27" tires, the 1-1/4" World Tour and ProTek are a bit larger than even the 1-1/4" Pasela.

The 27x1-1/4" Zaffiro isn't quite as wide as the 1-1/4" Pasela.

Old, aged tires can measure considerably wider than new tires, and some models are affected much more than others from years of inflation.

Classtime 

I had some Swift tires advertised as 35mm but on my rims, they measured 32. (plus they were not round in cross section which bugs me so off they went.)

dddd

I believe that the Swift 1-3/8" tires have the same casing dimensions as Pasela 1-1/4".

As for the non-round profile, tires tend to be taller/narrower when first mounted, then eventually the height and width nearly reverse, with the width becoming the bigger of the two dimensions.

Classtime 

The Swift tread pattern being taller in the center made for uneasy cornering. I wish Panaracer made a 27” Gravel King Slick.

bikemig 

Concur with the others, the michelin pro tek runs wide; they measure 27 x 1 and 3/8 on my rims. Plus they're decent tires.

ClydeClydeson

There is no inherent disadvantage of 27" wheels apart from lack of tire choices and availability. Just make sure you have a spare tire packed with you on tour because you might not like the selection available at any given shop or town... you can likely find a 27" tire at any shop or even W*lmart or a hardware store, but likely not of the quality you'd want for reliable long distance riding. You've probably come to this conclusion already.

As for the mismatch of narrow rims with wider tires, there are drawbacks but it's 100% fine to do. The main problem is that the profile of the tire will be an exaggerated 'omega' shape - the sidewalls of the tire will stick out much further than the sides of the rim, and this profile may allow pinch flats more easily (esp. if the tire is underinflated), it might have a slightly 'squirmier' feel compared to a better match of tire and rim widths, and at higher speed it will have higher aerodynamic drag than a wheel/tire with less difference in width. It's totally fine to ride, though, if you keep these things in mind.

Paul Waque 

I have found the Swift tire to be loose in the corners. I reasoned that off-centre tread blocks are too squishy.


Edit
After more riding, I quite like the tires and feel comfortable cornering with them.

bwilli88 

I have found that the widest tires for 27" were some that I got from Cambodia made by DRC. They easily measure 38+ mm on 18mm inside dimension rims.
But I really like my Swift Sand Canyons tires on my Raleigh Gran sports

ThermionicScott 

I like how file treads have come back for performance tires, it would be great if they could "trickle down" to other sizes of tires like 27" and 26"x1-3/8". Couldn't be too hard to do, just need the will to do it.

truthseeker14

Concur about the Michelin Protek 27 x 1-1/4" tires. Just installed, and fully inflated, they measure a tad wider than 1-3/8" or 35 mm. My 27 x 1-1/4" Continental TourRides that the Michelins replaced measured about 29 mm.

John E

You raise a valid point, that many tires differ in real dimensions from their callouts.

RiddleOfSteel

I have Swift 27x1 3/8" tan walls--lovely looking tires. Ride is nice--haven't ridden them enough to see how they handle at the limit, but no squirreliness thus far. They do run small, certainly on 27x1 rims (Champions). Price is great, too. I know Continental used to make a Grand Sport in 27" of some sort. Their very recent website redesign is complete and utter garbage for navigating and seeking information, so I don't know what's available there.

Road Fan

How wide is the Swifttire 27 x 1 ⅜" tire? That should be a fairly direct comparison to the Pasela 27 x 1 ¼" tire, 32 mm for the narrower one 35 mm for the wider one. The cross-section is 19% bigger in theory, if the casing thicknesses are the same. If that is borne out in the real tires, comparing on the same rims, there should be significant difference in cush between these two sizes.

Road Fan

Those are the old Wolber/Super Champion Modelle 58? I have a set of those, 23 mm outside width and 16.7 mm inside width. For the similar Ukai rims there are similar dimensions. If you have a rim which actually has a 25.4 mm inner width (I wonder this because your description of the rim is actually very vague.

If you really mean you have a common-variety 27 x 1 ¼ rim without hooked beads, ok. Then the inner width will be around 17 mm. This will be the case because rims marked as such (27 x 1 ¼") are spares replacements for old Raleigh, Peug, Motobecane, and many other old, common models.

Why is this significant? If you are trying to say something significant about compatibility of the 27 x 1 ⅜" tire with a rim which measures 25.4 mm inner width, the difference is 25.4-16.7 = 8.7 mm. That can be looked (just an estimation here) as an 8.7 mm increase in installed circumference and hence a corresponding increase in air volume. That would suggest there is a significant additional improvement in ride quality.

RiddleOfSteel

And at what pressure? Can't forget the pressure, front and rear--if they differ!

I am a bit amused that all of a sudden, true, measured-with-caliper width is now a concern. Before, this sort of discussion would have gone on as it has and that would be the end of it. But you're gunnin' for some actual data, and you have quoted the one guy that literally has--for himself!--created a tire width chart that lists a tires bead-to-bead width when laid flat, with that tire's resulting inflated on varying rim widths due to the fact that manufacturers, over the decades, have not only wildly varied in the nominal-versus-actual tire widths, but also have not stated on what kind of rim these tires were measured (or not!) from. Why this isn't done is beyond me, especially by the Germans/Continental. This "BWF" (Bead Width while laid Flat) Chart of mine has been really helpful in predicting fitment and selecting tires, especially if clearances are tight.

Sadly for you and for all of us, I have not done so with the Swift Sand Canyons. My impression, taking them out of the box, was that they were narrow for something that claimed 35mm width. Pasela folding bead 700x32s have a BWF of 73.5mm, which translates to about 29mm on a traditional rim (MA2 etc) at 65-75 PSI. The Sand Canyon 35mm / 1 3/8" tires were about that wide, and came to about 30mm when on the rim. The rims the Sand Canyons are on are Wolber Super Champion Model 58 27x1 1/4s (from the catalog!), which came with and are still on my 1985 Schwinn Voyaguer SP. I have not measured the external rim width, but these aren't the big, wide 27" rims I've normally seen. Pretty svelte in comparison, so I'd guess somewhere around 22-23mm wide externally. The bike is at my storage unit, buried behind a number of other bikes. I've been meaning to make a trip out there, so I'll bring a pump and calipers. I think it would be valuable information as well. I won't be taking the tire off, but can extrapolate its BWF etc via tire pressure, inflated width, and external rim width. Stay tuned!

RiddleOfSteel

Ok, Road Fan I got some numbers for ya. Rims are 23.5mm external. Tire, at 69 PSI, is 31mm wide. This means its bead-to-bead width is right around 75mm. On a "standard" rim of 19-20mm external width, this would be a 29.0-29.5mm wide tire at the same pressure. A bit off of the claimed 35mm, in most any case, IMO.