28mm wide carbon fiber road bike rims

28mm wide carbon wheels

Custom Aero road bike carbon rim 28mm wide 30mm/35mm/45mm/55/60mm deep

Toray T700 + T800 carbon fiber lighter version for Disc brake bicycle wheels.


WHY RIDE WIDER WHEELS AND TIRES

With that as background, what changes when you move to rims wider than 15C or 17C and tires wider than 23C or 25C?  It’s really three things – comfort, speed, and handling – to varying degrees and not always in a good way depending on what combination of tire width, rim width and rim profile you choose.


Let’s take them one at a time and then together.


Comfort

With a wider rim or a wider tire or both, you don’t need to pressure your tires as high as with a narrower one to support your weight.  All things being equal (temperature, outside pressure, humidity, rim, and bead design, tire model, just to name a few), you need the same amount of air to hold your weight up in the larger volume of the space created by the wider rim and/or tire as you do with narrower ones.  And we all know that riding at a lower pressure makes the ride more comfortable because the tires deflect more at lower pressures to absorb bumps and uneven road surfaces.  So if you have a wider rim and/or tire, you can ride more comfortably by lowering your tire pressure.


For years, ‘real’ roadies and racers used to blow up 20C and 23C wide tires to 110 to 120psi for what we foolishly thought and felt would make us go faster (less tire surface touching the road, more aero shape), our tailbones, and soft tissue be damned.


Now it’s not uncommon for road cyclists to ride tube/tire combinations at 70 to 90psi (and tubeless ones 10-20psi lower), all with wider rims and tires.  If you are doing a century, sportive, gran Fondo or just riding irregular pavement on your long training or fun rides, lower pressure tires can make the ride a whole lot more enjoyable.

700C x 28mm custom aero road bike carbon rim all round bicycle rims 28mm wide carbon fiber road bike rims