Largest tire to put on a 17mm rim?

[planeguy5]

Hi all,
After I wrap up my TransAm tour, I'd like to put wider tires back on my bike (a Novara Mazama). It came stock with 700x40mm Clemènt MSO tires, which were great, but I'd like to go wider if possible. The frame has a significant amount of space to accept wider tires, but my current limitation is the rims. They're 17mm.  What is the widest tire that could go on this size rim?

[canalligators]

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/rim-sizing.html

[mathieu]

The Schwalbe table indicates that on a 17C rim you can go to 52 mm tire width: http://www.schwalbe.com/en/reifenmasse.html .

[BobG]

The manufacturer of your rims (Alex?) may also have a suggestion. Here's that page for Velocity...

http://www.velocityusa.com/tech/rims/

A 700c Dyad, for example, has an outside width of 24mm, inside width of 18.6mm. Recommended tire width range is 25-38mm.

[BobG]

Here's Sheldon Brown's chart that addresses the width issue more specifically than canalligator's link above. Scroll  down to "Width Considerations"...

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

For a 17mm inside rim width it recommends a 25-37mm tire with the following note...

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

"Although you can use practically any tire/rim combination that shares the same bead seat diameter, it is unwise to use widely disparate sizes.

If you use a very narrow tire on a wide rim, you risk pinch flats and rim damage from road hazards.

If you use a very wide tire on a narrow rim, you risk sidewall or rim failure. This combination causes very sloppy handling at low speeds. Unfortunately, current mountain-bike fashion pushes the edge of this. In the interest of weight saving, most current mountain bikes have excessively narrow rims. Such narrow rims work very poorly with wide tires, unless the tires are overinflated...but that defeats the purpose of wide tires, and puts undue stress on the rim sidewalls."