Motorcycle Standard Tyres
Vintage Tyres stocks a wide range of tyres for classic bikes. Use the filters to narrow down on sizing and brand and browse away. Any questions – click on the chat icon or call us on 01590 612261.
In this section all the tyres are ‘wired on’ type - the standard method of securing a tyre to a rim after the 1930s. If you own an older bike, there’s a good chance you’ll be running beaded-edge tyres.
Classic Motorcycle Tyre Sizes Explained
All the vintage motorcycle tyres listed here are crossply construction and most use the standard imperial size form, for example 325-19. The ‘325’ means the tyre is in the region of 3.25 inches wide and the ‘19’ is the rim diameter it fits, also in inches.
Lower-profile (sidewall height) imperial motorcycle tyres are interchangeable with regular imperial sizes – these are shown in the chart below. In every case the ‘width’ of these lower-profile tyres is actually narrower than the numbers suggest, so cross reference using the chart or call us. You’ll be pleased to hear that the ‘19’ in ‘360-19’, for example, still relates to the rim diameter in inches.
Some of the tyres here adopt the modern ‘metric’ sizing that is used with radial descriptions, despite the tyres still being of crossply construction. For instance, when you see a 90/90-19, this means that the tyre is around 90mm wide and has a 90 per cent profile (profile is the sidewall height expressed as a percentage of the width of the tyre). The ‘19’ in this example is the rim diameter the tyre fits in inches, not millimetres, of course.
Imperial, low-profile imperial and metric-marked tyre sizes are interchangeable as shown in the chart below (width only shown here for clarity):
| Imperial | Low-profile Imperial | Metric |
| 250 | 310 | 80/90 |
| 275 | 310 | 80/90 |
| 300 | 360 | 90/90 |
| 325 | 360 | 90/90 |
| 350 | 410 | 100/90 |
| 400 | 425/85 | 110/90 |
| 425 | 470 | 120/90 |
| 450 | 510 | 130/90 |
| 500 | 510 | 130/90 |