What size tires fit? Measuring different size road bike tires and the official Colnago Weigh-in
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- In this video we swap out the old Conti 4000's for new 5000's and measure the before and after width. Plus we weigh the Colnago (with pedals).
#roadcycling #colnago #retromodern #steelisreal #vintageroadbike
Henry, i like your priorities. New tyres over a new shirt👍
It's a cost cutting measure to keep the channel going.
I just purchased a vintage steel road frameset to replace my crashed Marin. Bottecchia Columbus EL. Let the parts collection begin.
It really sucks that they havethose shitty threaded bbs. Otherwise i would definitely get one
Love seeing these bikes in action!
That 80s Colnago is beautiful and iconic, especially in a pink fade! As much as I love the classic Italians, my own 80's muse has a proud, local, Bay Area-centric theme and it's exactly the same weight. 1987 56cm Albert Eisentraut (Oakland), Avocet triple crank and saddle (Palo Alto), vintage Ritchey quill stem and handlebar (Menlo Park), 8 speed Suntour Superbe derailleurs and shifters, SPacenti/Wheelsmith wheels (Santa Cruz and Mountain View) Crank Brothers Quattro road pedals (not Bay Area, but Laguna Beach) Conti 5000 32c tires measure out to 31mm and fit just fine under single pivot, Superbe Pro "hidden spring" calipers (Koolstop pads are from Oregon, but I'll take them!). Italy has the best pizza, but we have the best burritos, California dreaming, 80s style!
Incredible, and even after 40 years these bikes still keep up with the best of them! What a parts list you have there. Nice work. I agree the burritos plus chips & salsa here are triumphantly supreme! Thanks for leaving a comment!
I ride mostly steel. A friend of mine builds steel frames and he had built a multi speed and a single speed frame for me. On both, I'm running 32mm tires, GP5000's on the fixed gear, and Rene Herse Stampede pass on the road bike. I had started off with 25mm tires about 10 years back, and have slowly moved to wider tires. Soft and light tires really transform the ride.
A hand built steel frame with handmade tires is possibly the greatest contribution of mankind. Platitudes aside, since first trying out light wide tires on a stiffer frame, I've slowly been searching for the perfect combination of frame stiffness and tire volume. It's become part of my passion. For me, I missed the glory days of road cycling, so it's fun to go back and dig through the archives, if you will, of cycling tech and see what happens when you mix together the old with the new.
My neo-retro build weighs 23.5 lbs with Look Keo 2 pedals, two plastic composite bottle cages, and a micro pump. It's a 1986 Specialized Allez SE built up with 2012 Tiagra/Sora off my daughter's road bike, a Profile carbon fork, and a set of Fulcrum Racing Quattro wheels. I definitely prefer this bike to my Masi Evolusione with full Ultegra, it rides so smooth.
Ms cools is so cool. a nice person is rare these days
Lovely bikes. Have been using Conti. Grand Prix tyres this past couple years. Roads here in Donegal that I like riding are pretty rough,twisty,minor roads in the hills and the 5000’s tend to cut easily. The tyre size thing is pretty overlooked in my opinion. Depending on rim,pressure and choice of tyre 23..25..28 tyres can all come out almost the same. Many years ago I liked the green wall Michelin race tyres and after a few months expanded 3 or 4 mm. Recently looking to find the ‘perfect’ tyres for my Bob Jackson 653 steel-Campag record road bike 28 were just too big and Conti.25’s had plenty of space,so I bought some Specialized 26 mm race tyres….they measured out at 24mm😬
I have found that my Continental 5000's in both tubed and tubeless stretch. After a few miles the tires seem to stretch to the advertised size.
That's good to hear. I think these will plump up a bit more, and when I get the new rims built into a wheel set that'll help too.
Hope everything is ok with you guys, been a while, just let us know you're ok, and wheels are still turning.
A timely video for me-I was thinking of getting 28mms, to get a more supple ride, but clearances are tight with the 25mms I am running now. I think I will stay with 25mm but try something like a Panaracer Pasela as I am on a budget (I am running Gatorskins atm-early 90s steel frame).
Suggestion: Michelin Pro4 in 25c measure out to 26mm on older 18mm rims (e.g., Mavic Open Pro) They wear a little faster than Gatorskins but the ride is so much nicer, and I've had very few flats over many years running them. Put the lighter Service Course version on the front and Endurance version with a little thicker tread on the rear, best of both worlds.
@@zoufyj185 Thank you!
I have a Michelin tire that is marked 25 mm but it is actually 28mm. At work we have had 2 tires the same model and specifications and one rubbed the frame and the other did not. There is manufacturing tolerances. I have used pink bike wash as a tire-rim lubricant. Then I found out that the wash is full of salt. I have dial calipers from QBP and they might be accurate to a 1/10 of a mm
I think with wider rims these tires will stretch beyond the 28mm. 1/10mm is good enough for tire measurement. I just wanted to vernier caliper flex for the audience 💪
I wonder if the size difference between front and back comes down to tire pressure. I've not measured my actual tire width, but I am thinking about some new ones for my late 80s road bike and facing the same "what size can I fit?" question. I don't think I can get 32s in mine though, maybe 28s.
Hi Henry and Ms Cool’s . My wife and I are curious what the weather is like in the winter months? Jan Feb and March . We are hoping to bring our camper and stay for the winter months. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Nick
Jan/Feb/March are the rainiest and coldest months for coastal California. Sometimes a deluge, others a drought.
I got those tires in a similar setup. Very light, low hysteresis, but the sidewall is very fragile. Fast and responsive, but definitely not for gravel. The 4000s tended to be a little larger volume for the same size. But the sidewall was also stronger.
What saddle do you have on that bike HWB?
Thanks Bengt_axle The saddle is an older model Toupe in a size 155mm with Ti rails. Have you tried any of the Conti gravel tires?
@@Henrywildeberry I have not tried the Conti gravel tires as I don't have a gravel bike. :( But I'd like to have one made up with 650B rims (I'm 171 cm tall), which I could also use with 700C road tires, equipped with Campy disk brakes. Not so easy to find a builder willing to do rim brakes today, and I'm still wondering whether 650B is a good wheel choice, or whether the tire choice will be too restrictive. Do you think 650B will disappear from the market, like rim brakes did?
@@bengt_axle I can't see it going away. 650b/27.5 has been around for a very long time. Plenty of people still like 26-inch. 27.5 (650b) is a great wheel/tire option. While 700c is quite popular, it's fairly heavy when you start putting wider tires on the bike. Even for tall riders like myself (72-inches), I like the ride character of 650b tires with 48-55mm. When you look at the math, the inertia more or less works out to be similar to a 700c road bike wheel/tire. That means it's light but with the advantage of wide tires and low rolling resistance. And because it's the same height overall to a 700c road bike tire the wind resistance is marginally equal even though it's wider. The spokes are shorter so you can run fewer spokes and have an equal strength wheel. There's a lot of other benefits too. For shorter riders it can help in better frame design. 29er works well or tall riders or bicycles with suspension because the frames are longer and the rake is slacker. This allows the bike designer to use a bigger tire without toe-overlap, nor excessively long top tubes. However, with steeper HTA's and normal top tube lengths on drop bar bikes it becomes increasingly difficult to get good overall handling with big wheels. You can run a longer top tube, but then you have to shorten the stem. 650b also allows you to have wider more comfortable tires without crazy long chain stays. Some people praise the long chain stay, but there is a point where it's too long. If you want to ride single track trails super long chain stays and long wheel bases with big tires are harder to turn in tight switch backs.
I think 650b is great and offers options for different folks.
@@Henrywildeberry You point out exactly the reasons for me wanting 650B. I'd rather have a fat tire in the front than a suspension gizmo. I'd like to moreover design a gravel/travel bike, in steel or Ti where one bike can be road and gravel depending on the wheelset (700CX28 for road, 650BX47 for gravel). The compromise would be that one bike would be good on gravel roads (not single track) but also be a good climber, due to its short (e.g. 420mm) stays and low gearing. Thanks for the opinion.
Very nice bike. And only 21 lbs!!
What handle bar bag is that? I need something similar on my road bike.
Thanks
Thank you Peter. The handlebar bag is a Roadrunner burrito bag.
Thanks. I have to admit that 25mm tires really do feel less resistant to compated to bigger tires. Kinda like you're gliding along the road.
The ripped T-shirt though 😅
No new video in a while are you doing good health wise?
Pre 1986 (and 86)... weight includes the pedals. Post 1986... no pedals in the weight. Not a rule; just a suggestion.
We'll callout 21lbs then 🤝
Rear tire carries more weight so that could explain why it stretches a bit more than front. Just an assumption.
Use TPU tubes.....you won't have to fix flats so often.....
Thanks for the suggestion. I haven't used TPU tubes, will regular patches work on them or is there a special patch you have to buy?
@@Henrywildeberryregular patches won’t work but the ride quality is like tubeless and they are super light.
I honestly don’t get the competition out there to put on wider tires…. 700x25/23 are just fine and are not a liability. I predict eventually once the wider is all saturated there’s going to be a completion to thinnest tires.
That sure looked like a dial caliper to me, but what do I know about Californican lexiguisistics. SuperFastMatt uses “lathe” as a verb, so y’know …
We can call it a left coast thing.
Any decent vernier caliper should be good for quick & repeatable measurements down to a thousandths or so, a tenth of a mill being .0039” - call it 4. It’s a matter of a feel for the tool, or practice that can be accelerated with a set of gauge blocks if you’re so inclined.
For us older guys the issue is being able to see the freakin’ things. Much like the slide rules that I cut my teeth on, though, actual verniers are more robust & reliably repeatable.
You're probably right about the name. My dad was a machinist and he had all these fancy tools at home and measuring devices laying around in his workshop. I used to call them dial indicators. I'm not sure where I came up with that name, but it stuck for many years growing up.
That's a quick reconversion reference. Thanks!
I'm catching up with you. It's getting harder and harder for me to be able to read the ingredients list on packages. Thanks for the comment.
I have sadly taken to carrying a $3 pair of reading glasses for long rides where I need to see the navigation on my Wahoo or assess the toxicity of convenience store snacks. Also, I need to find some riding partners where the mid-ride lathing out includes Vernier calipers vs dial gauges the true meaning of Pi, and the best pie as we lathe along.
Lathing was actually a thing when plaster & lath walls were common. I’ve spent no less than 1,000 hrs per yr turning handles over the last 50, but didn’t become a lather until I had a home with old-timey walls to deal with.
Ain’t _that_ a kick in the diction?
Knowing how to read a vernier scale can be a handy skill that applies to simple & robust calipers, old-school micrometers with barrel verniers, height gauges & all manner of other completely analog slip-stick scales. Devices that use them don’t feature delicate gear trains for driving a needle, they never require batteries, & if the “display” fades away it’ll be safe to assume that you, your children & their children & grandchildren, & all of their many friends got good value from your small investment.
Vernier calipers are like the downtube shifters of precision measurement.
I’m a toolmaker, mostly injection molds but I’ve dabbled. There was a decade or so of playing IT Guy for the backwoods tool shops that I was drawing & building for. They were transitioning into CAD driven CNC operations, & forty yrs ago goofs like myself, or the guys who had computers at home, we were your OG IT guys. In the 90s I did what turned into five yrs onsite, running the machine shop in a gear lab & cabinet making as a side hustle, then full time cabinet making until the next shiny thing turned up, etc.
I’d call my career a collection of colliding side hustles, weird stuff like a year of writing QS 9000 documentation, but since the mid 70s mold making has been at the core of whatever else I was doing.
Engine lathes happen to be a personal passion. All machine tools evolved from the lathe, & after more than 50 yrs I’m still utterly fascinated by them. I’ve done a lot of engineering & design, mostly because it pays well & also because that’s step one in building any complex thing, but the shop is my happy place & it always has been.
No way in hell I would use a folding tire. My tires have been mostly 35 mm/ 1 1/2" x 28".
They still stretch a bit over thousands of miles.