Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I'm not sure what you mean by "you can't make it work right". I've been running 55mm mountain bike tires on 17mm rims forever and never had any kind of issue. ...
Yea, but....
if you switched to downhill-width rims on that same bike, and used those same tires--you could run them at a much lower pressure than you are now, and get better traction and better riding comfort.
1) The only reason to use fat tires at all is to inflate them to lower pressures to absorb road shock,
2) fat tires on narrow rims must be inflated fairly high to avoid flexing laterally on the rim, so-
3) if you use fat tires on narrow rims, all you end up with is a very heavy, very hard tire. You might as well just put a narrower tire on and get the same hard ride, with less weight.
People prefer to be told that "you can use any width of tire you want on any rim" and it will function, but it's poor advice.
Wider tires work best with lower inflation pressures, and you can't do that with narrow rims.