700cc 26"

ndodd

at the moment just cant afford a new road bike have a mountain bike which i find very comfy it has 26" wheels with 1.5" semi slick road tyres on how much bigger are 700c wheels is it worth buying a set and putting them on if i can . or should i not bother and keep saving for a road bike

tatanab

Why bother?

1. 700c will probably fit in the frame, but you will have to reset your brakes and the rear hub width will likely be 5mm narrower.
2. What will you gain? Possibly the bike will be higher slightly geared, but I guesss you are thinking of narrower tyres. In that case just fit narrower tyrs to your existing wheels. For example, you can get MTB 26" fittiting versions of Continatental Gator Skins.

So I would not bother. It is more grief than it is worth so save your money but maybe change your tyres.

gkerr4

I agree with tatanab - don't bother.

perhaps look at getting the narrowest tyres you can find - and importantly, tyres which can be pumped up to the highest pressure (so perhaps invest in a track pump to ensure they stay at that pressure?)

You can get 1.25" tyres which run at up to 80 / 90psi which should make a difference.

redddraggon

http://wiggle.co.uk/ProductDetail.aspx? ... MTB%20Tyre

MTB Gatorskins are pretty narrow @ 1.125in

geoff_ss

26" wheels have a tyre seating diameter of 590mm; 700c are 622mm. So the difference in radius is 16mm and you'll need to be able to set the brakes to cope with that difference, as well as ensuring frame clearance. You may also find that the rear hub width is different -135 for your mountain bike and a lot of 700c wheels will probably be 130mm.

The best solution is to fit narrow 26" slicks as suggested above and save up for a road bike. IIRC Andy Wilkinson rode a sort of mountain bike on 26" wheels when he broke the 24 hour record with something like 525 miles so it's not necessarily slow.

Disclaimer: All the numbers above are from my head without checking, but I think they're accurate and in any case are not very far out :P

Geoff

homercles

I used these on my MTB for commuting - click

Basically a 25mm wide tyre and roll very well, certainly enough to keep up with all but the quickest road bike traffic. Can run at over 100psi and good puncture resistance too.

custom-freak

hello
it is possible if you are using disk brakes, in fact Mavic make a set to do this(speedcity for £250 ish a pair or get some mtb hubs laced to 700c rims), only worth it really if you are swapping between road and off road riding all the time, if all your riding can be done on a slick tyre then just get narrower tyres, i will bow to others on what tyres to try as i have road bikes for fast(er) riding and an mtb for muddy riding so no need for a slick 26" (also the last set i bought were very poor, kenda kwest 1.5 if i remember rightly.)
Cf

andrew_s

MTB rims are 559, not 590, so the difference from the 622 road rims is enough that you can't use rim brakes on both sizes of wheel. Disk brakes are OK, but off the shelf road disk wheels aren't common.

alfablue

homercles wrote:

I used these on my MTB for commuting - click

Basically a 25mm wide tyre and roll very well, certainly enough to keep up with all but the quickest road bike traffic. Can run at over 100psi and good puncture resistance too.

I use these on my "commuterised" MTB - they are excellent, fast, grippy, puncture proof, and will take up to 125psi.

ndodd

cheers for the advice think i,ll just keep saving for new bike rather than throwing money at the mtb