What is 700cc?

[Degarfs]

Hi

I bought a 2nd hand Trek 7000 with front suspension. The tire says 700 x 35c

I wanted to get a pannier rack however I weren't sure if it fits. The pannier rack stated that it fits on all 700cc hybrid bike. How would I know if it fits my bike and if my bike is 700cc?

Please help....

[Mulger bill]

G'Day Degarfs, welcome outside.

It's a metric wheel size, the most common for road and hybrid bikes. The tyres you run are nominally 35mm wide to suit a 700c rim. The rack will fit going by what you've quoted.

If you want to get more in depth, THIS is the place to look.

Hope this helps.

Shaun

[ldrcycles]

This is a point of very common confusion, it is not 700cc but 700C. People get confused because they only ever hear of 700C nowadays and assume it must mean cc, but it is actually one of a bunch of old tire sizes, 700A, B, C, and D. This link goes into detail if you're interested http://sheldonbrown.com/tire-sizing.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Long story short though, yes that rack should fit.

EDIT: Shaun beat me to it, and with the same link!

[Mulger bill]

No I didn't! I gave the OP rims, you sealed the deal with the tyre page

Shaun

[ldrcycles]

Ah yes, i hovered over your link, saw 'sheldon brown' and made an assumption. You know what they say about assumptions .

[Xplora]

It's 50cc better than 650cc... which is for children, hobbits and other inhibited individuals.

The only thing better would be 750cc, but lack of 7 foot tall riders makes it uneconomical to take to market.

[high_tea]

Disclaimer: if you want a useful answer, see above.

That 700C and 700cc are the same thing is an unfortunately common misconception. 700cc has a long and interesting history. As you are no doubt aware, early bicycle tyres were made by Dunlop, who were big in rubber. There was also a competitor, SockWater, who were big in beer. Nobody quite knows why they branched out into bicycle tyres, but there you go.

Now, Dunlop sized tyres by nominal tyre diameter, giving us the 26", 27" and so on which we all know and love. SockWater had a different idea: they would go by capacity. This wasn't so crazy, because a bigger tyre rides better and a smaller one is lighter and faster. Being brewers, they made an unfortunate assumption. They had long ago internalised not only avoirdupois units but obscure things like the relative capacity of barrels and tuns and firkins and, for all I know, butts. They therefore assumed that everybody else was across obscure units of weights and measures. Their first tyres were sized based on the openings of beer-storage vessels (so: a "barrel tyre", a "firkin tyre" and so on). This was a disaster. Nobody knew what they were buying. People stayed away in droves. Pretty soon they changed to units of volume (initally gills(!) but later on fluid ounces. This led to lawsuits when they Sold into the states and tripped up on the slightly different definition of "fluid ounce" used there.)

Anyway, 700cc (affectionately known as the "pint-and-a-half" tyre) has a 28mm cross-section and a 666mm bead diameter (some say this is another reason they did poorly in the States, and in general in fact). In Australia in was usually sold with the "cabbage-tree tyre". Yep, it was made from the cabbage-tree palm instead of rubber. Shame it didn't work! Between the completely useless tyre and the faintly Satanic bead diameter it sank without trace. Spares are no longer available. I'd steer clear.

[ldrcycles]

Oh wow, thanks for that, i had no idea there actually was a 700cc tyre.