28" Tyres & wheels, should I be concerned about availabilty?

[2Loose]

I am considering another bike, billed as a trekking bike it appeared to be pretty much what I am after, low gearing, luggage capacity and built in guards and lights - ideal winter \ general purpose bike.

However it has 28" wheels, which I get the impression are not that common - I can only find a few different tyre models to fit and they all seem to be geared for heavy duty & touring type duties which is fine for the bikes intended use. Marathons etc.

I didn't even know such a wheel size existed, should I be concerned about future availability and choices of tyres?

 

[tyred]

Caution! There are two different 28" sizes.

One (28 x 1 1/2") is found on old rod braked British roadsters and is indeed very rare nowadays but tyres are available and also maybe rims if you are lucky.

The other is actually a wide 700c wheel and will be marked something like 28 x 1 5/8" (even though they are smaller than 28 x 1 1/2"!). This is perfectly common and a wide range of tyres are available. For the sort of bike you have in mind, go for something like 700 x 35c or wider if you have the clearance.

 

[2Loose]

Unfortunately there aren't that many details on the website, but the bike is this one.
So you think 28" = 700c in this case...I am confused that people like Wiggle offer specific 28" Marathon Plus (as fitted on the bike) but don't mark them as 700c equivalents, which they also sell.

Clear as mud.

 

[Brommyboy]

You need to look at the ISO measurements - 700C is X-622, the first no being the tyre size and the 622 is the rim size. These tyres are commonplace.

 

[tyred]

It would be helpful if tyre and bike manufacturers, bike shops and everyone else stopped using these 26 x 1 x/y" or 700 x ??c type tyre sizing as it usually bears little relation to reality. They need to use the 622 x 32 type measurements to avoid this confusion.

I only came across 700c tyres being called 28" when I recently bought an old Batavus. I looked at the tyres and thought what the **** is 28" x 1 5/8"? I was concerned I had accidently bought something with weird sized tyres. It seems that the Dutch and Germans refer to 700c as 28" wheels.

I suspect that what you have there are wide 700c tyres.

 

[mcshroom]

That's almost definitely a 700c bike.

Decathlon/B'Twin are not very good at doing the descriptions, and all too commonly 700c bikes (622-xx ERTO) rimmed bikes get called 28" on websites/ebay In this case it's also French, so unlikely to use an out of date English standard.

 

[2Loose]

Schwalbe confirm the tyre as 47-622 ...a very wide 700c. Cheers guys. Now just have to confirm the minimum for that rim...