Maxxis Hookworm 20x1.95 freestyle tire

http://unicycle.com/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=636

I have been using it on a very slippery coated wood gym floor and it is great. Much less likely to slide out from under me than the Primo The Wall (which is terribly slippery) or the standard Miyata tire (which is better), even at 80 psi (which is as high as my pump goes). It doesn’t squeak much either.

The 1.95 width fits my Miyata standard frame, with very little side clearance to the frame.

The color scheme is nice: grey tread with orange sidewalls and a black strip next to the rim. Makes me think of ice cream.

It is also available in all black.

The tread has a shallow fine-grained crosshatch pattern (10 per cm). That pattern is broken up by curved grooves approximately 2.5 mm deep and 3 mm wide. Maybe those grooves are supposed to represent “hookworms”.

There is no preferred direction of motion.

When mounting the tire, it took three tries to get the tire to stay on the rim. It is a bit over-large in diameter.

The tire comes coated with some kind of residue (silicone?). It is not visible but you can feel it on your hands after handling it. It will get all over your floor if you don’t take the precaution of riding it a little bit on pavement first.

On the black sidewall it says “20x1.95”, “Nylon”, “Made in Taiwan”, “Inflate to 110 PSI Max (755 kPa)”, “Maxxis.com”, “53-406”, “M-121-3”.

That’s about it – I don’t intend to use it outdoors. I imagine outdoor riding would quickly smooth away the crosshatch pattern, possibly making it less grippy for indoor riding.

–Mark

This tire doesn’t fit in the Miyata Deluxe frame.

I just put on a new 20" Maxxis Hookworm tire. At first, it kept wanting to turn in toward the higher part of the pavement (I was riding along a cambered street), so riding in a straight line was a bit like dancing the twist. Once I got to a bike store and used their floor pump, though, I got this new tire up to its 110psi maximum, and that solved the problem. It defintely seems like a step up from my previous tire, a Wal-Mart special. At the moment, it even seems set to outlive my frame, which is starting to crack at the place where it holds the lollipop bearings. I fixed my frame with some hose clamps, but that’s another story. Anyway, the nice thing about the Hookworm, to me, is that it allows you to safely pump it up to 110psi, and it doesn’t have too much tread for smooth freestyle and street riding.