Need a second opinion
 

Do you all think that the gap between my stays and tire is too close? I switched out my Marathon plus 700x32 for these Kenda Flindridge pro 700x35 to explore gravel roads on the way home from work. But I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to ride a tire that has less than a 1/4 inch gap. Thanks y'all

http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/...s/IMG_0221.jpg

Should be fine.

In my opinion, that gap on the stay is not as critical as the tire to seat tube clearance. You seem to have plenty of a gap there! I say ride along!

The experience I had with little clearance tires is that if you run over a branch, wire or some long semi flaccid object, it can get pull up the tire. Theoricaly, with little clearance, your tire, the object or your forward motion (most dengarouse ) is going to give. In my experience only the object or the tire wins. Besides it doesn't occur that often for me to worry much, specially if you can see and avoid!

Double O

It looks fine to me. Plenty of room left.

that bike is too clean :-)

Nothing to worry about. New racing bikes with 23mm tires have less clearance than that.

Looks great to me. I find fenders more constraining than chainstays, give or take a failing qr release with forward facing semi horizontal dropouts...

Keep in mind that if you break a spoke, the bike may not be ridable. A broken spoke will knock the wheel way out of true, and you'll have more wobble than you can handle with that tight clearance.

But yeah, unless I'm mountain biking or riding an old wheel, I would not have any problem riding like that.

[MENTION=200675]chas58[/MENTION]is right. I've ridden with an even smaller gap than that, and it makes me nervous. Once, I did break a spoke, and the wheel would absolutely not turn. I happened to have a spoke wrench with me, which was a lucky thing. I loosened the spokes near the broken one and managed to ride home. If you want to use this plan, of course you'll need the required skill.

Looks fine to me. Is the wheel true?

I stuffed Schwalbe Marathon Supreme 700x50s into my CrossCheck, and I've got maybe 2mm clearance and no problems

How long ago was that? I've had a number of broken spokes on older single walled rims and also some on newer double walled rims. On the single wall, it gets wacky real quick. Every time I've broken one on a double walled rim I just had a slight wobble that didn't even rub the brake pads.

[MENTION=112221]Abe Froman[/MENTION], it was about two years ago on some old double wall rims. Actually I think I broke two spokes. Breaking spokes is fairly rare, so it's a risk that some may feel fine with.

Thanks everyone for your input, I'll rock these tires till they give me a reason not to.