Does anyone make a higher performance 27" tire? By "performance" I am thinking of a high thread count more flexible side walled tire like the Compass high thread count tires.

I am asking to avoid the switch from 27" to 700c rims on a vintage bike. The rims have already been replaced from the original sew up tubular rims to a clincher rim.

I have ridden the Panaracer tires and find they are excellent all round tires that are nearly bomb proof, but this was a racing bike back in the day, therefore the sew up rims, and I would like to keep the 27" but get a tire with greater performance.

Any thoughts or suggestion welcome.

Are you talking about skinny tires? Or just a higher thread count?

I haven't tried them, but Swift Tire makes the Sand Canyon in a higher thread count. I've used the regular Sand Canyon tires in 27 x 1 3/8" with the tan wall and like them.

The tan are 66 TPI and the black are 120 TPI according to their website.

SwiftTire 27? x 1 3/8? Tire ? Made by Panaracer ? SWIFTTIRE

Thanks Golden Boy, just higher thread count more supple tire, not skinny. I'm a heavier rider and run 28c-32c but with supple sidewall/higher thread count and find this is a very fast and comfortable tire selection for me. Trying to recreate this on a 27" rim without having to rebuild the wheels to 700c.

So far looking at Harris-27" tire selection, which is quite good, the best I have come up with is the: Continental 27 x 1 1/4 GatorSkin Tire (Wire Bead) 180 tpi, (330g).


Does anyone have experience with this tire on a 27" rim, how fast/supple is the ride?


Sand Canyon are quite nice looking, but hoping for a little more performance as this was a vintage race bike.

gatorskins are a pretty basic training tire that has been around for a long time. It is not the fastest rolling tire out there but it's a tough tire; so are the paselas pro tites that come in 27 inches.

These are training tires. I doubt you'll find a "racing" style 27 inch clincher; the world has moved on to 700c.

Panaracer Paselas are a pretty fast rolling tire really. I think they are better than clinchers of old. Don't count them out. At any rate Panaracer makes all the tires for these boutique companies, and when you buy a Compass tire (or Fairweather, or SOMA, or Swift, etc) they are actually rebranded Panaracers.

Anyway, here's a new SOMA tire that comes in 27" may be a bit nicer than the stock Panaracer Paselas. Soma New Xpress 27" Skinwall Tire

Obviously converting to 700c is going to give you more options. 27" is an obsolescent size. It's fortunate there are as many offerings as there are. It was always a utility size, but currently available tires for it are probably better than anything from the vintage days.

Gatorskins are 60TPI 3-ply, not 180TPI as "TPI" is normally meant.

They're also stiff and harsh bombproof tires, very non-supple.

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...as stated above, Gatorskins ride like bricks. I have ridden on every 27" tyre I could try out over the last five or six years, and Panaracer Pasela gives me what I consider to be the best result in terms of both rolling resistance and road feel. If you look at Bike Tires Direct, they sell them in the 27" size in the USA in both 1" and 1 1/8" widths.

The narrower ones will probably feel a little faster to you.

the rest of the ones I've tried are a mixed bag, and usually end up weighing too much in comparison.

If your looking for a bit more quality classic 27inch tire the Soma's are pretty nice choice.
Soma New Xpress 27" Skinwall Tire

Not quite. Made by Panaracer’s company, but different construction. Compass tires are noticeably different.

Well, if it had sew ups originally, then it had 700c rims originally. I say go with 700c if you can swing the cost of another wheelset and tires.

The 1974 catalog for my bike which was built in 1972 and sold in either 1972 or 1973 (I am told 73 and 74 models were the same) only says this about the rim/tires: “Tubular (Sew Up) Alloy Rims with Racing Tires”


I expect to get the bike sometime next week, but from the pictures it looks like it has Schrader valve stems, and so I presume somewhere in the past 45 years someone switched to a clincher rim and I assume 27”, however if they are 700c then a wealth of tires are available, though with a Schrader valved inner tube.


Thanks for the Soma tire suggestions I will check them out and yes I have used the Pasela in the past and they are my all time bomb proof winter/tandem tire with a good ride, but as you all mention 27” is an orphan tire and actually it is remarkable that we have the choices that we do.

Thanks again for your help.

Sounds like you should wait and see what you get then. 27" is likely but it could go either way. Schrader valves on their own don't necessarily mean anything. You can always put presta tubes back in. There's a simple adapter grommet. Even that isn't strictly needed.

In the 70s it was common to replace sew ups with 27" rims because that was the dominant size then, and tires and rims were easily available. 700c clinchers are the same size as sew up rims, but initially they were sort of a niche market size for racers than wanted to train on clinchers and not readjust their brakes. (you may know that already)

I have heard a number of people say Compass tires have high thread count, qualifying why they are very supple. While it is true that they are very supple, the thread count for each ply is only 60. Compass tested different thread counts, and found finer threads made the tire less robust, but not any more supple. Other details in the construction are more important.

The difference between correlation and causation.

I would bet $1 that Compass comes out with a 1-1/8 or 1-1/4 x 27”. It has been a big ask for a long time, but this year the line has expanded hugely. I would bet another $1 that they put out a 20” for folders and bents. But only $1.

Are you really 100% sure it's got 27" rather than 700C now? Switching from tubulars to clinchers the logical switch would be to 700C -- the brake track is in the same place and the overall outside diameter would be similar -- rather than 27".

Palincs, I am guessing 27", purely because of the Schader valves I can see on the tires rims. It would be great if they are 700c as that would solve a lot of issues. Bike should be here sometime next week and the mystery, along with others on this bike will be known then and I'll let all know what I find out.

Salamandrine an adapter grommet, I'll have to look that up, again would like to save a wheel rebuild.

Thanks Catgita on Compass Tires and the thread count information, and yes they really have expanded their tire selection, now if they would only do a 27" a lot of people with vintage rims wouldn't be happy.

And know I didn't know that a 700c clincher rim was a replacement for a sew up tubular rim, learned something new. Thanks

Oh and in revisiting the listing for this bike there's no question: "Wheel Size: 27 in". So these are 27 in rims, but with new tires, tubes and rim tape, so no issues with riding now.

So I will have to wait and see which tires are on the bike, but they are gum wall side walls.

I'm skeptical of the Soma Xpress tires' suppleness. Their page describes them as an urban tire with sidewall protection... I wouldn't be surprised if Paselas are a quicker and nicer ride.

According to this post, the casing fabric in Compass' "Extralight" tires uses the same threads as Panaracer's 120TPI casing, but in a sparser layup. It's not explicit about what the "Standard" tires use, but seems to imply it's probably the 120TPI casing.

Continental Ultra Sport II 27 Inch (Wire Bead)
Details:
1 1/8"
80 psi
115 psi
405 g
1 1/4"
65 psi
102 psi
430 g

Continental SuperSport Plus 27"

Weight: 566 grams

Continental Gatorskin 27 Inch
Weight: 330 grams

Panaracer Pasela Road Tire 27

27 x 1 Inch

Weight 290 grams - Bike Tires Direct/270 grams Modern Bike.com (?)

27 x 1-1/8/ Inch

Weight 330 grams

27 x 1-1/4 Inch

Weight 390 grams

Cheng Shin Super HP Tire with Puncture Protection

472 grams.

Vittoria Zaffiro 27 Inch Road Tire

Claimed weight is 450 g (1 1/4” width).

Soma New Xpress
??? Could not find information on tire weight, if you know please share!!!


Here's what I've found if the premise is that weight is speed, then the Pasela 27 x 1" is the lightest of the 27" tires (note a 20 gram discrepancy between two retailers), with a range from 270/290 to 556 grams among the tires listed. If there are more tires I should have considered please feel free to add to this list which is what I could find off the internet from retailers of 27" tires, but do include size/weight for tires you add.



So I think it would be a safe bet to use Pasela 27 x 1" on my vintage racing bike with 27" rims, though that would be my summer tire and in winter with all the debris from tress, needles, cones on the trails I ride I would go for the 1 1/4" (near 32cm) width with lower pressure (provided there is clearance).

Yeah, wait till you have it in front of you. It's not uncommon for people to lump 700c and 27" sizes together and call both of them 27". They are almost the same size, but not quite.

It would be nice if 700c, but it's nice to know the Pasela 1" would suffice if they are 27", but Thursday if delivered on time I should know.

The Somas list at a weight of 1lb about 450g with a tpi of 66 both of which are pretty good for 1 1/4" 32mm tire.

FWIW, I run the Panaracer 27x1" on my Viscount and love 'em.

Top

First off, the "premise that weight is speed" is wrong. A difference in rolling resistance is going to be a lot more significant than a tiny difference in weight. Second, if you could use a 28mm tire, why would you settle for a 25mm tire? And if you could fit a 32, why would you go with a 28? The narrower you go, the slower you are going. (Tests have shown that, and tire companies have confirmed it.)

IMHO if you're stuck with 630 then you might as well use a non-Tourguard, unbelted Pasela. It's a good tire and generally a very good price.

And by the way, there are both Presta and Schrader tubes in 622/630 size. You can't assume 630 just because you see a Schraeder valve. And if you do see a Schraeder valve, that doesn't mean you have to use Schraeder with that rim. I converted my Paramount to Presta in the 2nd year I owned it, and ran it with grommets in the valve holes with Presta valves for the remaining 19 years I owned the bike.

Don't disagree palincss, as noted earlier I run 28 & 32 cm, with the former on 700c rims and latter 650b rims on my custom single and tandem, the days of skinny tires are long long behind me. When we moved from 28cm 700c on our first tandem to 32cm 650b on our second custom tandem we noticed both more comfort on chip seal and rootlet trails but also additional speed, but "weight = speed" was to explain the reason behind the information listed on the tires above and give some reason to the selections, note the word "if".

But there is speed and then there is speed, while recreational riders are running wide tires, you don't see 32cm, let alone 38 & 43 cm tires in the Tour de France (the really wide stuff greatly favored in Bicycle Quarterly and probably rightly so for paved, gravel and dirt/sand riding, and now I think I with tires approaching and over 50cm?). I think there is a limit to the bigger, lower pressure tire being faster, as if there were any advantage to them for professional racers then the racers would race on them considering that they've tried everything else to get an edge from light weight bikes to drugged bodies, unless there's some restriction on the size of tires to be raced on, so you're preaching to the choir as far as non-racer riding with larger lower pressure tires.

...you seem to have joined the forum recently. While we can probably use all the members we can get, the ones with very strong and definite opinions, such as the one you have expressed here, generally don't seem to go the distance.

You can take that for what it's worth.

If you have any numbers that demonstrate more rolling resistance in Panaracer Pasela tyres, I'd very much like to see them. Otherwise, this is more of the wider is better Kool Aid that seems to be making the rounds these days. It makes no more sense than all those years everyone was certain that sub 1" tyres were going to put them on the podium in Cat racing. Tyre width and speed in relation to road surface is a complex model that you have done no justice. Good luck in here, because I sense you might need some.

I can assure you that based both on numbers and on personal experience, tyre weight is, indeed, a significant factor in both acceleration and overall feel of a bicycle. If you don't "get" that, maybe it's the sort of riding that you have done that would explain it. Or maybe it's something that you read somewhere. Rotational weight is dreadfully important on a wheel for something like a bicycle. I'm no weight weenie, but I know what works, sir.