28" Wheel vs 700c?
 

I recently purchased a Jorg & Olif bike. The wheels on it are 28" with stainless steel rims. I have a wheelset from an older bike that's 700c with aluminum rims. Is there anything that I should be worrying about with switching out the wheelset to the 700c's?

Trick question! 700c and 28" have the same bead seat diameter. So they're the same. Tires should interchange. You're only concern is the rim width.

I beleive this is correct, but riddle me this:

A 700c tire slightly smaller than a 27-inch tire, so why oh why is it equivalent to a 28-inch?

A 27x1-1/4" tire would supposedly be the same diameter as a 700x36C.
ERGO- a 700x37C (40C, 44C etc.) are "bigger".

Tire sizes don't really reflect reality, but I think if you put a 28" rim with a inflated tire on it beside a 27" rim with a inflated tire the 28" would look a bit bigger cause the tire is actually a lot larger.

A english british roadster 28" tire is bigger than our old Canadian 28" tire (which is the same rim diameter as 700c as mentioned).. I have no idea what the size of the American 28" tires are.. didnt they go extinct in the 20s or 30s when balloon tires came out?

As for the original poster I suggest you just chuck those 700c wheels on and see if you can get the brake pads to match up with the rim sidewalls, if they line up you're in.

700c is an approximated diameter of wheel with tire seated. Quick somebody state another fact about how innacurate bike parts are!

Thanks all. Bikeforums has always pulled through for me in the past. Yes, I consulted Sheldon's page before posting!

I've got an '84 bike with 27" wheels. I've been to 3 bike shops over the years where a junior mechanic tried to tell me a 700 tire would fit on my 27" rim just fine. All 3 tried, but learned that 700 tires do not fit on 27" rims. I didn't charge them for the lesson.

The shiny new NOS Fiamme clincher rims that just arrived at my door yesterday are listed on the original label as misura/size 28"x1 and my Fiamme red label rims and Vittoria tubulars are listed as 28" as well. That was just the old designation for 700C. In fact I had my Bottecchia bike in the LBS the other day and one of the staff noticed the 23-28" designation and asked the mechanic working on it what size that was (but she was really cute and the bike was waaaay older than her so I'd cut her some slack) ;).

It's what MTB'ers now call 29" for some ungodly reason. Still 700C. Actual diameter of the rim is 622mm I think vs. a 27" which is 630mm. Add to that the fact that back in the day, 27" rims were typically shod with large, high profile 27x1 1/4" tires while the 28's were usually fitted with narrow/low profile tubulars so they would have been even smaller. And obviously it's a valid question - why is a 27" bigger than a 28" and a 28" equal to a 29"? Marketing, plain and simple.

25 or 6 to 4?

There's a reason why I hate anything except ISO for tire size designations.

32-630, not 27 x 1 1/4.

nn-622, not 28 x (insert size here) or 700 x nnC.

as bhtooefr stated always look at size which will state width and bead diameter as in nn-622... I learned this when I tried to replace a 26 x 1 3/8 for the first time.

I agree 100% - ISO is totally the way to go and it would clear up alll this "how narrow a tire can I put on this rim" threads. Now if we can just get the world to follow along.

BTW - after reading this, I still don't know why a 27 is larger than a 28. And I am not sure, but I think a 29is smaller than a 27 as well. C'est la vie.....

Well, in THIS forum, I don't think it'd ever fully clear it up, because of ISO not being used on older bikes. ;)

29 (MTB)=28 (Vintage)=700C (modern designation)=622 ISO. And 27 is bigger than them all at 630. But would you want a MTB called a 622'er. 29'er sounds so much cooler. And no doubt they have marketing studies to prove it. :D

^ Generally, tires with a 622mm bead seat diameter (700c) aren't referred to as 29" unless they're at least 2 inches wide. In other words, they have to be a very fat tire to qualify. You could call a 29" x 2" tire a 700 x 50c, or a 29" x 2.2" tire a 700 x 55c, etc., but keep in mind, too, that "standard" mountain bike tires have always been called 26" (yes, I know, there's more than one BSD for 26" tires :D ), so I really think that has more to do with it than anything. Mountain biking has its roots in the U.S., with "inches" having always been the preferred unit of measure for tire and frame sizes. And like a 29" mountain bike wheel, a 26" mountain bike wheel (559 BSD) gets its name from the approximate outside diameter of the wheel when it has a tire that's approximately 2 inches wide on it. So really, the mtb "standards" are consistent, it's the others that are screwy-

Yes, with bicycles 26" could be ISO597 (old, sporting British), 590 (3-speed), 584 (old French), 571 (narrow, time trial; wide, old Schwinn middle weight) or 559 (balloon and mountain bike). With wheelchairs, 26" is usually ISO590 and ISO559 is often called 25"!

TCS

To add to the confusion, the Schwinn S-6 tires (26 x 1 3/8) are also ISO597 :p . I've got a Schwinn three speed from 1965 that uses those tires-

well i do not know where the bike was made but i remember than when i was growing up in mexico the touring bikes were 28" with a diffent kind of brakes while the road bikes were 700c or 27" the difference was huge. go to sheldonbrown.com to find a better answer.

Do you have a question about tire size that was not answered here? Or did you bump this year-old thread just to add to the confusion?

After all, I would say that everyone has already previously explained the differences as clearly as possible to the OP. Any additional confusion will only be distracting and most unhelpful for new members who may Google this page up in their efforts to try to understand the bizarre world of bicycle tire sizing.

-Kurt

I go to this Harris tire chart for understanding this sort of tire sizing thing.
http://sheldonbrown.com/harris/tires/index.html

And for the nitty gritty of virtually everything, both existing and extinct:

http://www.bikecult.com/works/wheelsizes.html

-Kurt

Yes, and I discovered the minefield of 24" wheels, too. Decimals and fractions do not mix.

I've got a Raleigh with 650A wheels and a Schwinn with the S-6 wheels. Both claim 26" but are not interchangeable. And my mountain bike wants nothing to do with either one them.