40-ish mm Tires on Thinner Rims?

[Eric Karnes]

Hi all-

Wanted to get your thoughts...

I have a set of OpenPro rims on which I comfortably run 35mm tires on my Hilsen. I'd like to go up to the max knobbies that the bike can run (I'm leaning toward 40mm Clements MSOs). Have people had success running tires this wide on OpenPros or would it be more prudent to invest in a new set of rims?

Thanks!

Eric

ps. If anyone has a spare set of 40-ish mm knobbies you are looking to part with, lemme know!

[Mark Etze]

I have that exact set up, Mavic Open Pro's with 40mm Clement MSO's. I run them at 60psi and they have been great with out any squirliness at all and no flats with 1500 miles on them.

[Scott Henry]

You are good to upsize on those rims, look at a mountainbike someday.    Tires can easily triple the rim width.

As for tire, I actually recommend these from Pmart
http://www.performancebike.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10052_10551_1168230_-1_400904__400904

Cheap as all get out, not too heavy and they perform really well.    They are my go-to tire for non racing cross bikes anymore.   Did I mention cheap?

Scott

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 7:05 AM, 'Mark Etze' via RBW Owners Bunch <rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I have that exact set up, Mavic Open Pro's with 40mm Clement MSO's. I run them at 60psi and they have been great with out any squirliness at all and no flats with 1500 miles on them.

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[Paul Clifton]

Well, now I'm confused a bit.

How much wiggle room do rims have on the max tire size, or does it depend on the rim shape?

Have any wide tires ever popped off any narrow rims?

I've been wheel shopping. I want to use mostly 38mm tires. The Open Pro is 15mm wide on the inside and is rated for up to 28mm tires (https://shop.mavic.com/en-us/open-pro-c-j24200.html). Sheldon Brown has a table that puts 19mm wide rims in my sweet spot: www.sheldonbrown.com/tire-sizing.html#width

It's been tricky to find a budget wheelset with both a 19mm or wider rim and a 130mm rear hub. So far the only reasonable option I've found uses a Velocity Dyad (http://harriscyclery.net/product/velocity-700c-dyad-rs400-tiagra-wheel-set-36-spoke-3247.htm).

But I have a lot more options if a 40mm tire works well on a 15mm wide rim. So what gives?

Also, anyone have any wheels for sale with medium-wide rims and 130mm rear hub?

On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 8:24:28 AM UTC-5, Skenry wrote:

You are good to upsize on those rims, look at a mountainbike someday.    Tires can easily triple the rim width.

As for tire, I actually recommend these from Pmart
http://www.performancebike.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10052_10551_1168230_-1_400904__400904

Cheap as all get out, not too heavy and they perform really well.    They are my go-to tire for non racing cross bikes anymore.   Did I mention cheap?

Scott

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 7:05 AM, 'Mark Etze' via RBW Owners Bunch <rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I have that exact set up, Mavic Open Pro's with 40mm Clement MSO's. I run them at 60psi and they have been great with out any squirliness at all and no flats with 1500 miles on them.

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[Patrick Moore]

This question is a perennial, and it has been pointed out many times that in the early '90s it was standard to run 2" tires on rims as narrow as or narrower than Open Pros. As long as you keep your tire pressure high enough, you'll be fine.

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[Patrick Moore]

You are better off with rims that "match" the tires; Sheldon Brown had ideas about this and a chart for them. But it's not necessary. 

With wider rims you'll get slightly wider tires and less sidewall flop at lower pressures; you'll also find that your sidewalls don't flex as much for comfort at a given pressure -- you may want to drop the pressure. I know that 60 mm Big Apples measured 60 mm on 35 mm (outside) rims and 65 mm on 44 mm rims. Elk Passes measure 27 mm on 18 mm rims and 29 mm on 23 mm rims; and so on. 

When I swapped from 35 mm rims to 44 mm SnoCats, the profile of the tire changed; it was flatter and not as tall. The tire felt harsher at 25 psi and I started to run them 5 or so psi less.

OTOH, with skinny rims, if you keep the pressure high enough, you'll be fine. There is a theoretical danger that too wide a tire at too high a pressure on too skinny a rim might blow damaged sidewalls apart, but AFAIK that will happen only with extremes or damaged rim walls.

In 1991, it was common to sell 18 or 19 mm rims to hold 2" tires; I know, I used them for thousands of miles and still use these rims for road tires. The rims were bulletproof and the tires flopped in corners if you got much below 30 psi.

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[Scott Henry]

Please remember the source for your info.
Sheldon died almost a decade ago.    Much has changed since then, if you are looking for any current info, that's not the place to look.

Back in his day, 35's were huge tires.

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[Patrick Moore]

It's not?

Which tyre fits safely on which rim? [all dimensions in millimeters]
	Tyre width
Rim width (interior)	18	20	23	25	28	32	35	37	40	44	47	50	54	57
13	X	X	X	X
15			X	X	X	X
17				X	X	X	X	X
19					X	X	X	X	X	X
21							X	X	X	X	X	X
23									X	X	X	X
25										X	X	X	X	X

Note: This chart may err a bit on the side of caution. Many cyclists exceed the recommended widths with no problem.

[Paul Clifton]

Thanks for the clarification y'all. Seems like, as is the case with most bike things, a few mm doesn't make much difference.

Sheldon hasn't steered my wrong yet, but I do try to find a second source usually. Here's another, slightly less conservative chart from http://www.slowtwitch.com/Tech/Implications_of_Rim_Width_2803.html

It still puts the 15c Open Pro way down on the skinny end and pretty much backs up Sheldon's chart. What's noteworthy to me is that 17c and wider will match well with any tire that I've every had a bike for. I do wonder why the 17c to 21c seem to match with a broader set of sizes, but as long as my wheels stay on the rim and the bike rolls and turns normally, I'm fine.

It's also noteworthy that the article is focused on how skinny you can get your tires. Different strokes I guess.

Paul in ATL

[lum gim fong]

I have two 135 wheelsets for sale. Too bad.

[Steve Palincsar]

On 11/29/2016 11:37 AM, Scott Henry wrote:

Please remember the source for your info.
Sheldon died almost a decade ago.    Much has changed since then, if you are looking for any current info, that's not the place to look.

And yet, they keep updating the site, in his honor.   It's far from a static memorial.

[lum gim fong]

One of the recent bicycle quarterly magazine is had a article about rims and tire wits.

[Scott Henry]

True, sheldon's site does get updated.    Once a month, its almost as if they figured out how to stay on the top half of the page for search results on the web.

The bearded one was very bike savvy (albeit very cautious and traditional), the new webmaster... we'll just say the updates are very QBP update-ish.

He can run whatever tires he wants.

[Bill in Roswell GA]

Paul,

Any Cyclocross racer that raced as Scott said "back in Sheldon's day" ran tires marked as 35mm but measured 32mm on Open Pro rims. That was a standard CX racing setup. I still run the same setup on my classic steel CX bike.

I did try running Pasela 35s on Open Pros and they were OK as long as I had about 70-75 lbs in the rear. Otherwise I would feel the rear squirm around on fast curves. For some reason (traction?) the squirm is more apparent on pavement. The tire didn't mind, but I found it a bit disconcerting!

Cheers,

Bill in Roswell, GA

[Bill in Roswell GA]

Yup. Thanks for point that out Steve. Sheldon's site is still the standard reference point. 

Cheers,

Bill in Roswell, GA

[Jon Dukeman,central Colorado]

From the Mavic web site:

https://shop.mavic.com/en-us/open-pro-c-j24200.html

[RichS]

It may be the same BQ article where Jan stated that rim width is not critical when riding supple tires.

Regards,

Richard  

[Benz, Sunnyvale, CA]

No one has mentioned this yet, but for some types of brakes, having a big difference between the rim width and tire width will cause problems with wheel removal, simply because the brakes can't open wide enough for the tires to pass through, even with the QR actuated. For example, on my Wilbury, running Hetres on A23 rims and Tektro R559 brakes, the tires barely squeezes through a completely open brake. If the rims were narrower, I will need to deflate the tire some to install/remove the wheel.

[Eric Karnes]

Thanks guys! As always, great info. I think I'll just run them on my Open Pros for now. And when I have a bit of spare change, I'll upgrade to a 23mm rim so they can run a bit truer to size.

Eric

[Grant @ Rivendell]

The ISO (int'l standards org) has crystal clear recommendations for inner rim width and tire width, but they're not regulations. A couple of years ago I posted them in some form somewhere--and we had an internal talk about them--and all of us here and tons of you there have had the brake-opening experience and the soft-tire mushy-around-corner experience with a narrow rim, but that kind of Technical Whinery never sticks. Sheldon's chart--thanks for posting it, Patrick--looks pretty close to the ISO numbers, and it wouldn't surprise anybody if that's where he got 'em.
The SILVER/Techtro 559 brakes were designed to address the wider opening solution to a 35mm tire on a skinny rim. We specified that and the reach and arm shape---and they're much better for it. It would be neat if all sidepulls had something like that, but these days in the go-fast community, "wide" is 28mm, so there's no need.
The ATLAS rim at 25.4 outer and I forget inner, but it holds up to a 45 pretty well--although it would violate ISO recommendations at that. The Velocity Cliff hanger is nice at 30mm outside. (I dig that it's the inside that matters for tire holding, and the outside for brake  opening, but I can't break out of my outer-only numbers.)
The Alex DM 24 rim, at 31.7 or 32mm, is great for 45 to 60 tires. Big difference in holding. Best big tire non super fatty rim out there, but hard to get in 650B/584. We haven on new CLEMS because we paid for the tooling to make them. If you read the John Black BLUG post, you might wonder where "tooling costs" become a factor, when it wasn't for Velocity--it's just a matter of where to cut the straight extrusion before rolling it into a hoop. But at ALEX, there must  have been something else going on, because we paid a few thousand for it...and now "own" the machinery that allows them to roll the 32mm rim into 650B rims. Blah blah blah...sorry 'bout that, but I like this rim-width kind of talk, too.

On Monday, November 28, 2016 at 10:32:11 PM UTC-8, Eric Karnes wrote: