Originally Posted by
garage sale GT
Tire sizes should be thought of as names not measurements.
Most 26X1-3/8 wheels take a 590mm tire, also called 650A or EA3.
Schwinns marked 26X1-3/8 sometimes came with a wheel which needed 597mm tires. I think those were proprietary to Schwinn and are marked S-6 instead of EA3.
26" MTBs take a 559mm.
I think there are at least eight sizes called "26 by something".
yeah, it's really funny how it works.
700x23mm is really 26" in diameter, while a 559mm rim requires 26x2.2in tires to make it a real 26"
German tire manufacturer, Continental, still calls 700c tires they make "28in" and uses fractions instead of decimals and decimals instead of fractions for their tires. It's really odd since germany was one of the first countries to adopt metric.