gugie 

I think what Neal means is that most of the people I ride with see me on a bike and immediately race away from me.

Wilfred Laurier

Old 'racing' bikes are awesome machines, but tire clearance is one of the drawbacks that severely limits their usefulness as daily riders for many people.

However, many less-race-oriented 'road' bikes that originally came with 27" wheels don't suffer from this limit - 27x1 1/4 tires are approx 32mm wide, and so 700x32 tires look perfectly at home, and the swap from 27 to 700 adds a little bit of clearance for slightly wider tires, or fenders.

gugie 

Yep, that's my sweet spot!

I think it's generally accepted that sometime in the 80's or so it was fashionable to design frames with minimal tire clearance. They look "cool", but I have no personal use for them.

JohnDThompson 

I used to run Michelin 700C x 18mm slicks and never had a problem. I haven't seen any new production that narrow in years, though, at least not clinchers. Pretty sure tubular track tires are still made in narrow widths. One of my bikes from back when narrow tires and tight clearances were fashionable doesn't have fork clearance for anything wider than 23mm, so hat's what I run now.

tiger1964 

Well phrased comment!

jolly_codger

I ran across these whilst looking for something else: https://bikerecyclery.com/nib-nos-vi...-individually/

SJX426 

Frame can be limiting and in addition is the release amount of the calipers. Both the Chorus and Record Ergos only open enough to support 25mm tires by the brake pads with rubbing.

smd4

Great find! Hopefully Bianchi84 can grab these.

CliffordK

For years I rode the narrowest tires I could get.

However, lately the minimum I normally find is 23mm. And, I'll ride either 700x23 or 700x25, hardly noticing the differences between the two, other than my Funny Bike that doesn't like 25mm tires. They'll fit, but very tight.

bamboobike4

My tire widths appear to change in direct proportion to my waistline.

Germany_chris

Hey look another tire width debate thread…I’m really going to blow it up

What would Grant say

gugie 

Well now you've guaranteed this thread will go 10 pages.

dddd

The last time that I mounted new Michelin "20mm" tires on narrow rims, they actually measured out to 22mm wide on narrow rims at 100psi.
Some recent "23mm" Hutchinson tires measured the exact-same 22mm on the same rims at the same pressure.

These days, I prefer using 25mm GP5000 tires on both narrow and wide rims. Not funny-looking at all, plus great performance, smoothness and wear.
Lower pressure reduces tread wear!
The GP5000 tires are available in black, brown and light-tan sidewall options!

The former GP4000 tires ran a little wider versus the 5000's, as the expected rim width is wider these days.

smd4

Turns out it’s not the maximum pressure, “bro.” The max is 10 bar. I’ve only been pumping to 140 psi—5 pounds below max.

How do you know what the “ideal” pressure is, anyway?

Trakhak

Ask and it shall be given.

"Gone are the days of simply pumping up your road bike tyres to the maximum pressure permitted and hoping for the best. Not only are excessively high pressures uncomfortable, they’ve also been proven to slow you down."

From this page:

https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/wor...tyre-pressure/

smd4

An internet article says I should be running lower pressures? Oh, well then, in that case I’ll lower my pressure ASAP!

So much talk about “comfort” in that article.

News flash: high-end, high-performance racing bicycles are not built to be “comfortable.” Neither are Formula 1 race cars. Or F/A-18s. If you’re looking for a comfortable bike, then you shouldn’t be looking at a race bike. Period.

HTupolev

Not as a primary driving design consideration, no. But in many of their goals, they benefit from choices that result in greater comfort. The main reason that the use of racing bikes tends to be uncomfortable is that racing is uncomfortable; when racing, a racing bike is likely to be more comfortable than an inappropriate choice of bike.
For example, if you show up to race on a bicycle with an upright and rearward fit, you have a posture problem. Getting your torso low and aero requires a more closed hip angle than you would have used on a racing bicycle, which can create discomfort in the back or legs. You also might end up with the handlebars too close to the torso, forcing you into uncomfortable acute elbow angles, and requiring more upper torso tension to keep yourself braced in the posture. The discomfort that comes as a result of a bicycle's poor racing posture is not good for racing performance.

In the case of road tire pressure, "discomfort" is generally in reference to transmission of surface irregularities to the rider as vibrations. In these vibrations, energy from forward motion is redirected to cause a bike+rider system to deflect vertically. If this is getting all the way up to the rider's body, it's far past when it had a good way of returning to forward motion, and so it has cost performance. If the tire is able to deform around the irregularity, so that the vertical deflection doesn't happen, then this expenditure of energy does not happen.
This isn't just a recent argument. It's why pneumatic tires saw mass adoption of racing bikes in the first place. From Chapter XX in Archibald Sharp's Bicycles and Tricycles, published 126 years ago:
Obviously the modern road network is a smoother environment than how things tended to be in 1896, and a pneumatic tire pumped extremely high is not as stiff as a solid tire. But there's still performance benefit to be had in letting the suspension mechanism do its job.

And in the modern discourse, this isn't just Jan Heine. Pretty much everyone who's looked into the matter in on-road tire testing has observed the performance penalties of overinflation. For example, here's a pair of blog posts written by Josh Poertner, who acted as a technical director at Zipp for over a decade.

There are certainly open questions around tire setup, but I don't think that the existence of performance benefits in choosing tire pressure to mitigate road vibration is one of them.

nlerner

That’s exactly why I removed my saddle and seat post while racing, oh, and also my pedals (just lashed my feet to the crank arms). I relished in the discomfort!

bamboobike4

Be still my beating heart. Like Specialized Turbos without the lumps.

bamboobike4

Wouldn't that perhaps pertain to psi pressure "ideolgy?"

Had to.
Sorry.

bamboobike4

Good point.

A good example is a Cipollini road frame.
Their "comfort" frame is miles more aggressive than any road bike I've been on.
I cannot imagine how uncomfortable a top-notch Cipollini race frame would be, but it would be fun to try one.

I understand, gave up long ago on that ethos, but my tri bike-leg PR is still on 700x19's.
Light bike, skinny tires, high psi, and a purpose to the suffering. It worked.
I simply have no desire to ever again hurt that much with a run-leg still to be done.

I was once asked to build a UCI minimum 15.1-lb bike, from a Kestrel 200-series frame.
It took a lot of trial and error, and in doing so I learned how teams replace nearly every single bolt/spring/etc.
I did get it down to 15.1 lbs and the buyer (a bike shop in California) agreed to buy it, after many pics/emails.
Like an idiot, I decided to ride it on a Jan 1 annual ride, 35 miles.
It was simply the most uncomfortable bike I'd ever been on, that fit.
On that ride, I realized how driven those guys (and gals) are.

As a follow-up, I built a crit bike, also very nearly 15 lbs, a Cannondale.
I sold it to a pro hockey player. He said he and his teammates rode offseason.
He said he really wanted to make them hurt, and didn't mind hurting himself during.

So, I get it. I'd add the AH-1 Cobra to that list. Designed purely for 1 thing.

Specialized determined some time ago, that for normal folks, "comfort equals speed," and put it in their ad campaign.
The real slogan should have been "comfort equals sales," but that would have been too obvious.
Bikes have gotten a lot more comfortable down the pecking order from the top, but at the top-not.

Peter Sagan's video about Paris-Roubaix pretty much says it all.

SurferRosa

Unless you're a tout* in one particular camp, why would anyone even try to do that?

* Instead of "salesman," a little shout-out to Charles Bukowski.