deephate

I went from as skinny as possible at the highest pressure ( I was running average 10PSI more than recommended ) to as fat as possible running 3/4 max pressure at the maximum. I think the largest I have is 700X38 and 27X1 1/4. One bike I have maxes out at 700X25 so that bike gets ridden very little anymore.

veloz

On vintage road bikes I like 28mm tan wall Paselas. 32’s give more cushion but feel slower and start to look big on classic road frames (if they even fit). FWIW: Old school 27x1-1/4” tires run about 32mm and the slightly racier 1-1/8" around 28mm. Anything between those two is probably the sweet spot.

greg3rd48 

Better quality 25s on three bikes and this seems to be my preferred sizing at least when I am riding with no baggage. 28 Panaracer PTs on my Super Course with fenders which I do like for this bike and 28 Gatorskins for my loaded up U08 urban commuter. They offer little in the way of a comfortable or supple ride but they have proven to be bomb proof.

noglider 

I go as wide as my bike will allow. Sometimes I only have 1 or 2 mm of clearance from the chain stays. I ought to carry a spoke wrench, because I'm really pushing my luck.

I've learned the wisdom of using the lowest pressure that is safe. Really enjoying that.

One of my bikes will only fit 25mm tires, so I ride that. It's nice for a change, because the bike is light, and the tires add to the feeling of lightness.

rustystrings61 

I went to 28mm tires about 17 years ago; about four years back I dropped the tire pressure to 85-90 psi from the maximum stated on the sidewall, and I may go a little lower yet. I've still got ancient Continental Sport 1000s (because Kent Peterson used to ride those) on the bike with Wolber rims (because those tires are a nightmare on Mavics), but my other 700C bikes have blackwall Paselas in 28, which actually measure out to their stated dimension. I run those around 85 psi, and I weigh about 170, and I plan on experimenting with lowering the pressure down to about 75 psi.

Using 28s worked out fine for me on a mix of smooth asphalt, less-maintained secondary, forgotten chipseal and extended excursions on hardpacked dirt and gravel fire roads - even on a fixed-gear. For me, it has been a magic size.

In the last year I've 27 x 1 1/4-in tires at 70 psi; this summer I acquired a set of Panaracer Paselas in that size. The experience of riding those on varied road surfaces leads me to feel that, for the way I ride, I was sold a bill of goods back in the late 70s when I followed the magazine's advice to ride harder skinnier tires.

PeterCT

I go as low as 25 on my road bike, but 38 on my hybrid (which I use a lot because I'm on gravel a lot) is pretty comfortable .

beicster 

Put me in the "as wide as the bike can fit" camp. I never was fast and I am even less so these days so even when everyone agreed that wider tires were slower it did not matter. But, I do appreciate comfort.

davester

but that's not true. Much testing has shown that all other things being equal, wider tires are often faster.

beicster 

I guess I was not clear. I meant that even back when most folks thought that skinny tires were fast, I was not fast so I went with wider tires for comfort.

davester

Ahh, I see!

gomango

Before my last three day bike trip to the cabin, I put on Snoqualmie Pass 700x44s on the Bilenky. Most of the trip was on gravel and they rolled like a champ.

Zero flats, super comfy, fairly quick and didn't complain with thirty extra pounds of stuff on the racks.

I've also been running Soma Supple Vitesse 38s on my Monstercross most of the summer. Decent tires I think! However, as fall looms I''m switching to Bruce Gordon RnRs. They are 700x43, roll well on the road and the knobs help in loose gravel, especially in the quick turns.

I have been gradually moving all of my bikes to wider tires, as the roads here stink. Even the Della Santa and my CSI wear 700x28s nowadays.

My next project will be an all-road 650b and there will be zero shortage of tire choices in 650b. I'm a little jealous of my wife's MAP 650b and now I want one.....

noglider 

@gomango, I think you're ahead of me in the move to allroad type bikes. I've been thinking of 650b, but a smart person here pointed out I should be happy with wide 700c tires on my Super Course, so I'm about to try that. I've seen these allroad and gravel bikes, and I think they are the best merger of so many attributes. My wife has an All-City Macho Man, and I'm envious of it. It's so perfect.

ollo_ollo

Had a bad crash some weeks ago, so while I healed, I finished a project begun earlier this year. Although 2 road bikes could only go from 23-25c, most now have 700 x 28 or 32c. Two kept their 27 x 1 1/4 and my 66 Super Sport fit the widest, with a 700 x 37 front and 700 x 41 rear. Appears it can go even wider if I remove the fenders. Don

mstateglfr 

Genuine question- does anyone actually run the tires at the same pressure though? The whole benefit of wider tires is running them at lower PSI which then negates the whole 'all other things equal' part of the deal.

mstateglfr 

Right- PSI isnt run the same in both tires. Which is why i find it odd to read the 'all other things equal' comment so often. All other things besides tire width arent equal, so why mention it?


Its like this- because of my height, all other things equal i would have been a better basketball player than Steve Nash.
Well ok, but reality says all other things arent equal and not even close to equal. He is a future first ballot hall of famer who has an advantage in every measurable category over me besides height. Its absurd for me to even make the claim with such a caveat.

Oh well.

Ozu

I began to use 25 after all years on 23, I feel more confidence on them.

davester

My "all other things equal" comment was only meant to refer to the tire construction. It didn't occur to me that folks would take that to mean running tires at pressures they weren't designed for. I thought it was pretty well known that proper tire pressure is a function of tire width and rider/bike weight. If you want to apply the "all other things equal" rule to tire inflation level then it should probably be by measuring the tire drop measurement, not the psi reading.

ThermionicScott 

I think everyone has a bit of the truth here. The recent testing has shown that for tires of the same construction, wider ones don't have much of a speed penalty, if any. But as @Salamandrine pointed out earlier in the thread, all other things were not always equal -- I've been involved in bicycling just long enough to remember when 28mm+ tires that weren't heavy-duty were hard to come by. And 26" tires may have never had the supple, fast-rolling options they do now (Specialized Fatboy is 60tpi, Tom Slicks are ??). So roadies could legitimately claim that their skinny tires were the fastest.

Until now.

sloar 

This thread turned out great with some wonderful info. I'm going to start out with the 28's that's already on the newly purchased bike. I think I might slowly go up with 32's next. It can be a lengthy and expensive experiment.

Dfrost 

Tire pressures that I use, front/rear, based on the old Frank Berto chart. These are what I start with, and they drift down by 5psi or so until I top them up after a week or thereabouts. FWIW, I weigh 175-180, and strive to ride “light” over road imperfections, but there are 29 pairs (!) of railroad tracks that I cross on my most frequent ride home.

650B x 38 - 50/55. Very little downward drift at these low pressures.
700C x 32 - 65/75-80
700C x 28 - 75/85-90. These are on my recently front racked and bagged Miyata, so now more weight on the front tire. I might up the front pressure a bit

abshipp 

I've been on my mountain bike, cx, and touring bike a lot lately. Took the aluminum/carbon road bike out last night and felt like my teeth were going to fall out it was so rough. Unfortunately that bike is maxed out at 25c, but I don't think my Gatorskins are helping to smooth things out any.

Hardrock23

I've only got the one road bike for now & it has 28's. I'll probably stick with this size when getting new tires. I run them around the 65-75 psi range, sometimes slightly lower if I haven't topped off that day, so they seem pretty cushy to me. If I run them closer to the max psi though, they can be pretty harsh.

jimmuller 

I don't see many dissenting opinions here. (And I will point out that d.o.'s on this subject usually generate heated responses for daring to challenge the majority opinion.) But some of us do hold d.o.'s.

It really depends on the roads, how you ride, what is important to you or to the pro's who lead the field and whom others follow. I like narrow tires run at max rate pressure. Have on various bikes 23mm clinchers, 23mm sew-ups, 25mm clinchers, 28mm on the UO-8 (which I used for about 45 miles of gravel yesterday), and 32mm on the tandem.

What are the benefits and loses? Narrow is lighter and generally more supple though that may be less so now than years ago. Narrow tires should/must be run at higher pressure in accordance with the smaller contact patch, so the tread deflection isn't so different from that on wider tires. They do have a higher spring rate but tire deflection is significant for only small road irregularities, not the big bumps which we all have to tolerate occasionally anyway.

About riding, if acceleration or even the feel of acceleration is important to you then go lighter. (I can sure feel the difference.) I do not run Strava or anything else to track my average speed, don't care about it one bit, don't race anyone, rarely have to ride hard to catch a train or a ferry. I can afford to hit the brakes on rough patches, something the pro's can't do. I don't ride on rows of road-shoulder speed bumps. The roads here are okay, some good, some not so good but tolerable. Comfort is not high on my priority list. I don't ride hours and hours as fast as I can go every day for weeks, whereas the pro's pound themselves to pulp. They ride in peletons at high but nearly constant speeds for most of their saddle time, so acceleration is important on only brief and infrequent occasions.

The point being, the factors which matter to me or to you could be quite different from what matters to pro riders or bike columnists or tourers or grocery-getters.

Wordwreckin

mentioning tire widths and PSI is worthless without mentioning your weight and the weight you plan to carry. I'm all about wider tires and lowering the PSI, but for me, being 235 pounds and frequently carrying 20-30 pounds means that the recommended tire PSI for my weight is almost always MAX PSI! I have messed with lower pressures, but things start to feel squirrelly and sluggish pretty quickly.

repechage

A question for those with wider 700c tires, which ones seem to install easy, that is the bead diameter feels a bit larger than other tires. Reason is I have a NOS pair of Ambrosio Elite rims and they have a bad reputation for being a challenge to mount tires on. At this point I'm not motivated to build them up without tires that will mount reasonably easy.