How To Find Bike Tube Size

Close-Up Of Bicycle Parked By Yellow Wall with Red Tire

If you want a smooth bicycle ride, you need to notice the best tubes for your tires.

Paradigm Credit: Rafa Fernández / EyeEm/EyeEm/GettyImages

Bicycle commuters and avid cyclists will hold that the last thing you lot want on a long bike ride is a punctured inner tube. In an instant your expedition can become from shine to choppy (ouch!).

To foreclose a ride gone haywire, y'all demand to find the best inner tube size for your wheels. But there are quite a few tube sizes out at that place. Before you caput to your local cycling shop or sporting appurtenances store, take a wait at your tires and remember the size written on the safe.

What Is a Bike Inner Tube

Wheel inner tubes are inflatable rubber or latex tubes that sit on the within of your bike tire and help keep your ride safe and smoothen, co-ordinate to the Evans Cycles buy manual. While in that location are tubeless tires out there, these structures are an essential function of most bicycles, whether y'all're riding a road or mountain bike.

To find the right inner tube for your bike, you need to find one that will fit the diameter and width of your tires, which is institute written on the tire itself. When y'all buy an inner tube, the packaging will usually list which diameter and width it fits, according to the purchase manual.

For case, if an inner tube says it's best for 26 10 1.95-2.125", that means the tube should be used for a 26-inch tire with a width between 1.95 and 2.125 inches.

Some road bikes use 700c tires, which use millimeter-sized inner tubes. If yous see an inner tube packet labeled 700 ten eighteen-23c, that means the inner tubes work with tires that are 18 to 23 millimeters wide.

Finding the Correct Inner Tube

Finding the right inner tube depends on the size of the tires on your cycle. While you can observe a diverseness of bikes with wheel sizes ranging from xvi to 27.v inches, the most mutual sizes include 26 inches, 27.5 inches, 29 inches and 700c.

Tubes tin can range anywhere from 1 to 3 inches or 19 to 45 millimeters, depending on the type of wheels you take. Since tubes are flexible and stretchy, they're typically sold in a range of widths. You simply need to make sure the tire diameter for the tube is verbal.

Store the Best Cycle Tire Tubes

While these are a few of the mutual tube widths y'all may run into at stores and online retailers — like REI and Amazon — always go by what's written on your bike. Hither are some of the top bike tire tubes:

AR-Pro 28 Road Bike Replacement Inner Tubes ($27.99, Amazon.com)
Co-op Cycles Presta Tube ($viii.50, REI.com)
Bell twenty-Inch Universal Inner Tube ($3.96, Amazon.com)

Let's say your wheels have a 26-inch diameter and a i.three-inch width. As long as you lot buy tubes made for a 26-inch diameter wheel, you can buy any range of tube width that covers one.iii. If you lot find a tube that'south 26 10 1.ane-1.5" for example, that will fit your tires. Or, if y'all find a tube that's 26 x one.2-1.7", that will work, too.

Common Inner Tube Ranges for 26-Inch, 27.5-Inch and 29-Inch Tire Diameters