Recumbent - Help!!

Long setup short, I recently acquired an old Thebis recumbent trike. Despite its reported shortcomings, I’ve had a recumbent grin on my face for about 3 days now. Now for the bad. It has its original 24 x 1 1/8” Wolber Rallye tire on the front. The rear tires are IRC Roadlite EX 20 x 1/18”. Schwalbe what appears to be a good 28-451, but I can’t find a 22-541 (600 x 22A) for the front anywhere. There are some wheelchair tires that may be close enough to be pressed into service, but they are not as narrow and high pressure as what’s on the trike now.

Here’s my call for help. If any of you know where I could find a high-pressure road tire sized 22-541 (600 x 22A) please let PM me or throw it up on the forum. Maybe your LBS has one, covered in dust, hanging in the back room. I don’t expect you to purchase it. I’ll take care of all of that if you’ll just pass the info along to me.

Thanks up front for your efforts.

Try Gaerlan's bike shop in San Francisco www.gaerlan.com or Poweroncycling in Florida www.poweroncycling.com and ask them if they can find a suitable tire for your trike. Both deal with people who build their own recumbents so they have a pretty wide array of parts. If not, one possibility is to have the rim replaced with one that you can buy tires for- rebuild the wheel. I've had Gaerlan build a front wheel for my old Linear and it was quite satisfactory. In your case, you may have to send them the wheel and have them change out the spokes and rim since of the true diameter of the rim is different it will also require new spokes.

Thanks for those leads. I'll contact them. I have considered replacing the rim. It might well come to that. As an aside, I don't know how they'll true it as my front wheel hub is also the bottom bracket so there's no axle of the type we're used to. Thanks again.

Wheelchair 24" tires do not seem to grab or clinch the 24" Thebis front rim. I tried!

Yeah, it's looking like I might just need to put a new rim on my front wheel. If I go from a 541 to a 520, there are a number of good tires available. I'd still like to find an old tire hiding someplace so I don't have to alter the trike. Thanks for the heads-up as I was considering a wheelchair tire.

What did you end up doing? Do you still have your Thebis?

Harris has a wider 32-540,

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/tires/540.html

Thanks PaPa. How would a 32 do on a 22 rim? I'd rather have a narrower tire, but I like not having to alter the trike.

What did you end up doing? Do you still have your Thebis?
If I remember right, I tried several shops, and eventually found a tire for a Schwinn that held, but I kept the air pressure low just in case it would slip. I sold that trike about 10 years ago but what a terrific learning experience!