What is the deal with finding a replacement tire or a wider tire for my old 70’s 24" Schwinn? Any help would be appreciated.
Schwinn had a proprietary size into the 80’s, and went with standard sizes some time around 1984.
You can still get tires to fit Schwinn, you just need to get S5 or S7 tires. If I recall the S7 is the wide one and it is 24x1 3/4", not to be confused with 24x1.75.
Here is a link to one at Ebikestop.com, but since it’s a Sun brand tire you can get it from just about any bike shop that gets stuff from J&B.
Thanks, I will check with the local bike shop.
I was just cruising around one ebay and someone has a Schwinn unicycle tire for $10.
If you want an original Schwinn tire this is a great deal if it’s new as the listing says.
Thanks, I will keep my eye on that. Local bike shop is checking on one for me.
Note that an “original” Schwinn unicycle tire, if it’s not the newer kind, will be at least 27 years old. So its condition and usefulness will be directly based on how it was stored.
Yes, S-7 is the type of tire you need; if your bike shop doesn’t have it I would just search online. You probably won’t get anything wider than 1 3/4" though. And yes, in “tire math”, 1 3/4" is not the same as 1.75".
Second option is to find a replacement rim with 28 holes. Third option is to find a replacement unicycle.
Sometimes its hard to let go of something that I have had since my youth.
I am having it powder coated and the local bike shop is ordering a tire for me.
Tire Math
Yeah, I remember the day, thirty years ago after my original Schwinn white wall tire finally gave up the ghost. There we were at the bike shop trying to replace the 24X1 & 3/4" tire with a 24X1.75" tire. No matter how hard we tried we just couldn’t get it on the rim. Apparently decimals are smaller than fractions. There’s probably a line about that in Tom Lehrer’s song “New Math”.
Geoff