old road bike tire size

the only size which matters is the diameter of the rim.

the rim can take 1" to 2.5" since these are the common sizes.

Those 26" with the fractional width have a different bead diameter than your run of the mill 26" mountain bike wheel.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/26.html

>>995009
Cool, that helps because a ton of shops around me have various 26 tires but not specifically 1 3/8

So do you think that this rim tape dimension is for the tire diameter as well? as far as I can tell its the original rim tape. I measured as best as I could with a tape ruler, but without taking spokes off and the cassette/ free wheel off (which I don't have the tools to do) the measurement won't come out that accurate

>>995011
Oh ok, so I guess I have to get specific then, I read the link, very interesting.

The bike in question is a mid 80's ross adventurer. Pretty Low end by today's standards, but I was advised much better than anything else in my meager budget, It was free from my dad. I'm only using it for the occasional 10-20 mile ride/commute.

I'm just worried to run out and buy some tires for that size just to find out that the rim tape size is smaller than the required tire size.

>>995013
26 x 1 3/8 most-closely corresponds to the 650A French size. However, Schwinn had a proprietary 26 x 1 3/8 size which was incompatible w/ anything else