Front tire question

[Perhsing]

Hello new to the forum here and don't know anything about motorcycles. But I do know I want a cafe racer style bike so I'm going to try and do this myself. One thing I don't like on the XS400 I recently purchased is the tiny front wheel/tire combo. Would like something bigger than what's currently on there. Current wheel is 18" with a small diameter tire on it. What is the largest diameter tire a rim like this would accept? I attached a picture of my bike....thanks

 

[rshutchinson]

90/90 or 3.0 is all that is recommended for that 1.6" wide rim.

You would really want to lace up a wider rim like a 1.85 or wider before sticking a wider tire than that on.

Remember that when you put a wider tire on a narrow rim it really pinches at the bead area which makes the tire very round (so you lose some width) and more dangerous. So if you really want a wider looking tire you also need to go with a wider rim in this case.

 

[Perhsing]

Thank you for the response.

 

[lemonhead]

I have a '79 with mag disc wheels (18" front and back) and I used this for reference:

dropbears.com/u/utilities/tyrerim.htm

Ended up getting the smallest possible fitting set of Bridgestone s11 spitfires and am satisfied with the results.