As-built, Albert Ross was fitted with 27″ tyres on Wipac alloy rims. The rear wheel had a standard quick-release hub, with the hand lever replaced by a very nice little allen-key fitting. The front wheel was slightly more unusual, having a Sturmey-Archer Dynohub at the centre. I went through tyres like they were party balloons on the Nordkapp ride, having three rear tyres fail in quick succession with unexpected bead failures, and once I had solved the problem by reducing the tyre pressure in the rear tyres, the remaining tyres simply wore through to the canvas. I found it hard to get English 27 x 1 1/4″ tyres in Sweden and Norway, and was contemplating changing the rims for a more normal continental size, but managed to get back to England and then stopped worrying about the problem.
Readers of my Sopwith-Camel blog will know that last year, I discovered that wheels for 27″ tyres were obsolete. After the Dynohub failed irreparably on the first long-distance ride, I was reduced to scavenging a flimsy 27″ wheel from the neighbouring scrapyard to complete the journey. I knew than that if I was to start using Albert for any further serious cycling I would have to take the plunge into the turbulent waters of tyre and rim sizes.
I had been thinking for a while of fitting large mountain bike tyres so that I could carry luggage and not worry about the exploding sidewall problem, but I soon came up against two problems. The first, not serious but worth considering, was the extra drag that knobbly tyres would create, and the knowledge that simply having such tyres on a bike was no guarantee of actually riding through muddy patches. A few trips on a mountain bike with panniers and luggage convinced me that there was no advantage to be gained from these types of tyres. If I rode into anything vaguely muddy or sticky, I came to a halt and usually ended up with a wet foot. It was safest to dismount and wheel the bike past such obstacles, which is exactly what I would have had to have done with skinny tyres.
The second, more serious problem, was that the caliper brakes on Albert would not reach the smaller diameter rims, even though I could fit a mountain bike wheel into the front forks. And, as if that problem wasn’t enough, I was losing 2cm ground clearance because of the smaller diameter of the tyres. It doesn’t sound much, but I knew how often I had scraped a pedal on the road or rough ground with the old wheels on, and didn’t want to sacrifice a millimeter if I could avoid it.
After some wandering around the web, I managed to get an idea of what rims and tyres might work, and ended up getting 37-622 700×35C rims, 28×1 5/8″ x 1 3/8″ tyres, and 25/32-622/630 tubes. The tubes and tyres fitted the rims happily, the wheels then went comfortably into the frame, and the brake blocks only needed fractional adjustments to work.
I pumped the tyres up to a pressure that felt right, but I didn’t have a gauge with which to check what actual pressures I had achieved. They felt wonderful when ridden, but I know from my Scandinavian experiences that too much pressure in the rear tyre can be catastrophic, and so I shall have to buy another pressure gauge and be a bit more scientific before setting off in earnest again.
The problem now is that I have overlooked the faults in the saddle and the bottom bracket for too long.
Does anybody know of a good frame-builder in the Southwest of England who can work on a Pedersen?
