So first off road ride back in Edinburgh after two years in Vancouver, very glad to say the Pentlands welcomed me with open arms, beautiful day riding a basic Bonaly/Harlaw/Green Cleugh/Maidens loop, and some fun in the mud along the way.

Crazy busy up there though, probably close to 30 ramblers in total and lots of anglers, good to see I guess!

I’m currently running a Salsa Vaya 2 which seemed perfectly up to the task apart from the stupid compact double chainset that I asked to shop to leave on the bike despite their suggestion that I swap it for a triple, will need to investigate swapping or lowering or justing manning up I guess.

What is the biggest width 700c tyre people are running on this bike? I’ve got a 37c WTB on there at the moment but interested to know how much bigger I can go, there appears to be almost 10mm either side to play with…

Cheers

welcome back! Its been really dry up there until the last week 🙂

😀

it’s designed for 45mm i think, i run 35mm on mine and there’s bucket loads of space but never tried anything bigger

you’ve brought the vancouver rain back with you!

Rain?? We were in week 4 of the traditional 12 week cloudless summer, it was approaching 33C when I left, genuinely unpleasant!

Pentlands were mostly dry under-tyre, I just sought out the muddy bits.

Gazc, thanks, I hadn’t checked what it was designed for, the guy in the shop (who really seemed to know what he was talking about) told me I wouldn’t be able to fit the 41mm Knards that were fitted to the Straggler next to it, he seemed so adamant that I didn’t want to embarrass him by checking it in front of him!

I run 37mm Schwalbe Marathon Dureme on my 2011 Vaya, plenty of room to go a bit larger.

i’ve got 47 mm smart sams in there with plenty of clearance.

You can fit a 50 mm WTB vulpine in and ride it – but the clearance is a little close imo.

41 mm will be perfect.

Great, thanks Tomthumb, at least I know I can experiment now, I always enjoyed the Small Block 8s and I noticed they come in a 47c, and there is also the Slant 6 in a 45c.