I’m building a 29er hardtail. Definitely on budget so using 2nd hand wheels… Stan’s Arch MK3, with 26mm internal width.

In James Vincent’s nice February article for Singletrack, testing 4 Maxxis DD tyres, he recommended DHR2 2.4 front and Aggressor 2.5 back. But he also said:
“…One piece of wisdom I can pass on to you; don’t be tempted to try and fit these tyres onto narrower rims”

I want to copy his tyre choice but pretend he never said the last bit, so am wondering…has anyone had success with wide DD tyres on 26mm ish rims?

article is this one:

Enduro Rubbers – 4 Maxxis DoubleDown Tyres Reviewed & Compared

They’ll work on narrower rims but….you’ll have to lean the bike *lots* more to get them to bite.

cheers. I think he said it was kind of impossible to even get them on and he’d busted his tyre levers and fingers trying. It’s probably a bad idea all round…

i had a 2.6 assegai and a 2.5 DHR on hope rims which are 23mm while waiting for my DT Swiss XM521 to be build (they are 35mm). The tyres went on ok, but the profile was hella distorted. In practice this meant that there was plenty of straight line traction (aka drag) but no cornering grip until the bike was leant over, leading to a big loss of confidence.

Once they went on the rims they were designed for it was a hole different story. You can feel the ‘edge’ digging in almost instantly for oodles of cornering speed and confidence.

Once the DT swiss wheels turned up, i put some regular 2.3 DHR’s on the Hopes. they had less drag and more corning grip than the oversized WT tyres. I wouldn’t do it personally mate.

They’ll physically fit. No idea what his problem was in the review, but as other have said, profile will be all kinds of wrong. Just fit the 29×2.3 dd

i run dual DHR 2.4s (DH casing) on 25mm rims and haven’t killed myself yet, apart from being significantly larger than 2.3s the profile doesn’t seem to be any different

They’ll work ok.
Until you try the same tyre on a wider rim & realise “wtf was I thinking, they work so much better now.”
The 2.3’s were much less squirmy on a narrow rim.

“wtf was I thinking, they work so much better now.”

This was literally what i thought first ride after swapping them over!