The Lemon Fool

staffordian wrote:Ahh, bike tyres. When I was a lad it was twenty six by one and three eighths or by one and a quarter. Or 27" if you had a fancy racer.

Didn't you also buy bike frames in inches? It's been so long since I had a bike, the last one was a silver Raleigh racing bike with foam handlebar grips which didn't last long, I used it for my paper round and when you could afford it you upgraded the gears, pedals whatever to Shimano.

I eventually sprayed it green with an aerosol my mum got from the car paint shop she worked in and named it the Megadeth Machine after the band.

WickedLester wrote:

staffordian wrote:Ahh, bike tyres. When I was a lad it was twenty six by one and three eighths or by one and a quarter. Or 27" if you had a fancy racer.

Didn't you also buy bike frames in inches? It's been so long since I had a bike, the last one was a silver Raleigh racing bike with foam handlebar grips which didn't last long, I used it for my paper round and when you could afford it you upgraded the gears, pedals whatever to Shimano...

Yep, 21" or 23" used to be the two common sizes for adult bikes.

You must be a youngster though. In my day the gears to aspire to were 'Campags'. Campagnolo, I think was the name, and they had none of this fancy indexing, you just moved the lever on the down tube a little until you found a gear and the grating noise from the chain ceased

staffordian wrote:

WickedLester wrote:
Didn't you also buy bike frames in inches? It's been so long since I had a bike, the last one was a silver Raleigh racing bike with foam handlebar grips which didn't last long, I used it for my paper round and when you could afford it you upgraded the gears, pedals whatever to Shimano...

Yep, 21" or 23" used to be the two common sizes for adult bikes.

There were certainly more than just those sizes: fit is important in a bike! Larger sizes for the tall chaps. And smaller sizes for the likes of my girlfriend as-was at the time we both graduated.

My first metric bike was bought in a hurry when I moved to work in Germany in 1985. I'd been assured that there was a train to my place of work there, so I moved out intending to bring the bike in a couple of months when I'd found a flat there. But the train turned out to be work-in-progress: a line that wasn't due to open for almost another year. So I found a bike shop!

UncleEbenezer wrote:

staffordian wrote:Unless you are buying tyres, of course...

OK, I'll bite.

Explain the difference between 27 x 1 1/4 and 700C.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tire-sizing.html

All you wished to know and more. But the short answer is they are two completely different sizes.

Dragging this back to the original topic....

Early last week we ran the air to air unit (the one that replaced the woodburner) to warm the living room. Last night we ran it to cool it.

Now I like old cars almost as much as V8, but sometimes there are advantages of moving with the times

Paul