Originally Posted by
Bryna
Ah, ok. I'm not familiar with the terminology, and am mystified as to why a different unit of measurement is required for moutain bikes vs. road bikes, lol. I thought I saw 29" and 700c used interchangeable somewhere and so concluded that they must mean the same thing, but I guess that is either incorrect or at least gauche.
So I'm shopping for a bike, and some of the options I'm looking at have 700c tires, which I understand to be faster on the road, but less safe on the trail. And my current bike is a mountain bike with 26 inch tires of some fancy variety that don't get flats. So I thought, well, maybe if I did end up getting one of the bikes with 700c tires, I could put my 26's on instead. But I guess the answer is probably not?
29" and 700c have the same bead seat diameter, so a LOT of tires are interchangable but superwide 29er tires won't fit on super skinny road rims and vice versa.
Putting 26" wheels on a 29er is usually not going to work well. One "maybe" situation I can think of would be a 700c hybrid with 30mm tires, swapping in a 26er wheelset with 2.35" Schwalbe Fat Franks on. Not many 700c hybrid or CX bikes will have the clearance for such fat 26ers, however. You'll still likely have to deal with increased pedal strike.
27.5" to 26" or 27.5" to 29" is a much more reasonable swap. Some companies are even selling bikes with eccentric BBs installed to allow for such a swap.