Tyre clearance on the Triban RC120

Originally posted on 17 October 2024.

My friends recently gave me a lovely Triban RC120 bike for my city rides. I am very fond of it, but the 28mm OEM tyres that come with are untrustworthy and too thin for me. I decided to get a pair of Schwalbe Marathon Plus instead. They're extremely heavy but, as far as I can tell from my other bikes, absolutely puncture-proof, which is a good thing for city riding.

Since I have a pair of 38mm tyres on my Triban RC520, which pretty much has the same frame as the RC120, I thought getting the 40-622 (ETRTO) / 28x1.50" / 700x38C (French notation) Marathons would do. But it didn't. As you can see from the photos below, while the front tyre fits, the rear one doesn't, as it rubs against the seat stay bridge. The rear tyre has a clearance of about 5mm, which is just about enough.

Don't make the same mistake I did.

Table 1: Rear tyre rubbing against the seat stay bridge, front tyre fitting properly inside the fork.

I'll check if the 37-622 (ETRTO) / 28x1.40" / 700x35C (French notation) fits and will update this page accordingly. It probably won't fit either, except if its pressure is kept low and the axle of the wheel isn't seated right in the bottom of the dropouts, but we'll see. I probably should have made a safe choice and bought an even narrower tyre. But I like wide tyres.