Originally Posted by Al K
Hi MTBers,
What's been your experiences with wide tires?
slower while climbing, but very nice coming back down. a little heavier, to a lot heavier, depending on what tire you choose. the smallest tire i run is a 2.25" IRC Trailbear. the largest for me is a tie between an intense 909 2.7" and a Specialized Evil Twin 2.6" a few in between. i think the lightest is about 720gms, and the heaviest is nearly exactly twice that. My norm is to run a DH dual ply tire in the rear, and something a bit lighter/wider up front. Personal fav combo right now is a Maxxis Mobster 2.5" 60da DH in the rear, and a 2.4" Panaracer Fire FR up front. The 2.4" tire is actually *slightly* larger than the 2.5"
on slow speed technical rock crawling, big, fat tires with low PSI, uh, well, rock. i can run some of my largest tires at </=20PSI and not have any problems. very nice on long descents/lift runs. or for running the large fatties on the front of my rigid SS. two of my rides are hardtails, and running fat tires on the backs of those is a nice thing.
as a general rule, the larger the tire, the lower the pressure you can run without worrying about pinch flatting. very nice feature, especially if you still like to run tubes instead of tubeless.
unless you are racing, or are a total weight weenie, go for the big meats. for the once in a while race, i through on some 2.1 panaracer Fire XC Pros.
a few examples. the Specy2.6, the Pana 2.4, the IRC 2.25.