Hey there, I'm new to all this. Love getting on my bike growing up and for the first time finally bought a decent bike and not a Wal-mart special. I have a 2013 Marin Alpine Trial 29er and am looking at putting smoother tires on it for commuting and have the mountain bike tires on the side to swap over when I hit the trails. From what I have read so far a 700c should fit but I'm kinda lost when it comes to clincher, non-clincher, folding or non folding bead and all that stuff. I have a hook style rim but not sure what I should be looking for.
You'll need a clincher which is the non tubeless tire. You can get something like the Schwalbe Big Apple but their pretty pricey for commute tires ($85 a set).
Sometimes. It depends on the width of your rim. Short version is "get a commuter tire made for a 29r mountain bike," like those in Shakester's response. Long explanation is at Question: Can You Put Road Tires On A 29"er Rim?.
"Clincher" is a "hook style" rim. "Non-clincher" would generally refer to what's called a "tubular," where a tube it literally sewn into a tire that surrounds the tube entirely (heh), and the tire is then glued to the rim.
For wire vs. folding, I'm going to generalize: I think in the sort of tire you're looking at you'll find that wire beads are on the heavier, cheaper versions of tires and will be slightly harder to mount. (There's a whole long discussion of how this isn't always true, that wire beads can -sometimes- be easier, bead types and tubeless, but that gets into a lot of stuff that deals with specific tire/rim combinations and setups.)
When I was doing the One True Bike thing, I just left my mountain tires on full-time. I find my ride times around town are driven more by traffic signals than how fast I can ride the bike between them. And I've been noticing lately that riding asphalt and riding trails wear my tires very differently.
If your riding is really heavily weighted toward commuting - like you go mountain biking once a month or something - maybe you'll trash knobbies without getting to use them on trails enough. But otherwise, I think people overworry this. And do you really want to have to change tires every time you're planning to ride trails? I have enough trouble getting out the door with bikes that I don't change around...
Changing tires every time you want to do a different ride gets old quick. Another set of wheels is nice ,but it get pricey to do that . The easiest and maybe cheaper way to go is a used road bike.
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