27x1" tyres and smaller spotted on ebay

[mikeymustard]

I was looking for some 27x1 1/8" tyres and I ran across these NOS 27x1", thought it might be of interest to someone.
There's also a coupla pairs of 3/4", I'm guessing these are probably quite rare? What size rim would the 3/4" fit on?

 

[mjr]

Rule of thumb is tyre width is 9/5ths the rim, so 15/36", if there's ever been such a thing. More likely 7/16?

 

[dddd]

There have been millions of bikes sold with tires as narrow as the rim itself, though this is perhaps at the very limit.

But it is the inflated width of the tire that counts here, which is typically several millimeters narrower than the width printed on the tire when we are talking about tires from before 1990 or so!

One can never trust years-old tires to be reliable at full operating pressure, and these narrow ones need a lot of pressure!

Tires this old should only be used for display bikes in my opinion. The tires degrade in many ways even after five or ten years, such that the tread usually wears extremely fast, the casing may peel apart, the outer ply of the tire may rupture, and the tread may come off the tire in pieces.
There is also the problem of the old tire tending to slip along the rim, tearing off the valve stem, since the fabric wrapped around the bead of the tire is not grippy any more.