The bike came with 1.4′ rims (I think), and 2.50-18, 2.75-18 tires front and rear. They’re toast.
If a rim is that bad the tires can’t be any good either. They’re the ‘Sony’ local brand you can find only at Caloocan and in the provinces I think, preferred by tricycles for their super low price but relative ok durability for hauling stuff around.
If there’s one thing I don’t want to skimp on it’s tires. I used to go around in 9 year old Dunlops on the other bike and experienced a lot of slippage and a near accident trying to climb a simple gradient on the sidewalk. I’ll have none of that. So while there are really cheap P800 peso tires around I went for a brand name.
As replacements I bumped up the sizes one notch each from 2.50-18 to 2.75-18 front, and from 2.75-18 to 3.00-18 rear. These translate to metric 80/90-18 and 90/90-18 respectively. These are the only ones I could find online for that size and are good priced. The Chinese Swallow brand has a lower reputation but costs at least a third more.
These are modern looking and not ‘period correct’ but I’d rather have grip than have my face planted on the sidewalk from slipping or cracking tires. Also there’s nothing more important than having confidence in your bike and tires play an important role in that confidence. If you doubt your bike in any way you will never enjoy your ride and so it would be pointless.
I’m still going to use tubes on each as you can’t use tubeless on spoked wheels.
I also bought a couple of 1.4 rims.
Looking back I probably should have bought one 1.4×18 for the front and one 1.6×18 for the rear. I’m worried that the rear one might be too ‘fat’ for the rims. I really won’t know until we put them together to find out.
Also, I do not know what the proper size of spokes to get for these. So when they arrive along with the brakes sets from powder coating I have to go over to the shops around Valley 1 to have them put together and balanced as well. My worry is they won’t have everything I need since these aren’t standard and the shops over there only sell the really common stuff.