I’ve got a CX bike with XM319 rims, which if I’m understanding right means 19mm rim width. Bought for commuting, a bit of gravel, and maybe the fireroad long way home now the weather’s better and the evenings longer. I’m also enjoying grabbing an early morning run out on my non-MTB’ing weekend day, where I can be back home in 90 mins before the kids are even properly up.

Rather than continue to wear out the CX tyres that came as stock, which are wide, heavy and somewhat draggy, I’ve picked up a cheap pair of 28mm tyres, but the profile doesn’t look right on these rims – too rounded and doesn’t seem to be much height to the tyre, so if i take them down the back lanes then i’m going to ding a rim in no time.

Is there a recommended rim width to tyre width ratio? Any ideas for cheaper wheelsets to match (need to be disc brake hubs) – or should I resell the tyres and get some hybrid slicks that’ll sit on the stock rims better instead?

28mm tyres on 19mm wide rims sounds ok to me – if anything, those tyres are possibly too narrow for 19mm rims perhaps?

That’s what I mean – too much of my tyres is being used reaching across the rim and not enough to provide height / cushioning.

I’m running 25mm tyres on 23mm rims on my road bike, not had any issues.

You can run slightly lower pressures on a wider rim, ime, without dinging a rim.

23mm on 23mm for the hack bike

I ran 25mm tyres on 19mm rims just fine for quite a while, mainly on-road. If you’re making regular back lane trips (as in off-road) then 28mm at a reasonable pressure won’t be ideal. Sounds like you might need some fat (35mm) semi-slicks to cover your needs?

I’ve had these 32mm Zaffiros on the commuting bike for a few weeks now & for the price they’re a decent option to try something slightly wider – 500 miles in & no issues – bought another set in fact, at that price even if I get 1500 miles out of them it’ll do : Zaffiro 3

And these on another set of wheels, wider again in either 35 or 37mm flavour Voyager Hyper

I have no connection to Planet X – i’m just cheap, like their tyres 😀

19mm rim width

thats external width?

most modern wide road rims are 17-19 internal and 22-25 external

Both schwalbe and Sheldon have a table of tyre vs rim width. Remember, the quoted rim width on the table is internal. Off the top of my head, with a 19mm internal width, 28mm is as narrow as you should go. 17mm rims are needed for 25mm tyres (according to the table).

Cheers all. Off the Mavic site, it’s an ETRTO 19mm rim, which makes it 19mm between flanges (just wanted the chance to say flange unchallenged)

Then Sheldon reckons the minimum size tyre is 28mm, all the way up to 44mm. Alternatively, the rim size on his table that has 28mm as the middle size tyre would be a 15 or 17mm one.

http://sheldonbrown.com/tire-sizing.html#iso

[also shows that while a lot of his info doesn’t change with time, sometimes the times change. I quote; “Unfortunately, current mountain-bike fashion pushes the edge of this. In the interest of weight saving, most current mountain bikes have excessively narrow rims” ]