Ben has spent the last few months with the Huck Norris tyre inserts in his tyres to see if they’re a fad or a mountain biker’s best friend.
A puncture can ruin a ride, a smashed wheel is even worse. The Huck Norris tyre insert system isn’t a new concept but is the latest in a long line of ways that companies have tried to keep the wind in wheels.
Ben has been testing the Huck Norris inserts to see if they make a difference.
Key features:
- Available in three different widths for different rims.
- Fits 2.1-2.4″ tyres (enduro)
- Available for 26″, 27.5″ and 29″ wheels.
- £29.99 for single, £54.99 for a pair
- HuckNorris.com
Tyre inserts are all about two things. Protecting your rim from damage, and preventing pinch or snakebite punctures.
The quirkily-named, Huck Norris goes about these tasks in a simple and utilitarian manner as it is basically a strip of closed cell foam, similar to a camping roll mat, but developed specifically for MTB. It acts as a cushion between the trail and the rim when you go over square edge hits or pointy rocks, spreading impact forces and preventing the tyre from being split across the hard edge of the rim.
Before you can go riding though, you need to install it, and this is one place where the Huck Norris is miles ahead of the more complex competition like Pro Core, Cush Core, FTD and many of the other more involved products on the market. It is so simple.
Just link it up with the supplied velcro, pop it in the tyre, add sealant and then seat the tyre. In fact the way the Huck Norris pushes the tyre carcass outwards makes it easier to seat the tyre on the rim with a normal track pump.
Out on the trails, the first thing you notice is… nothing actually. It just feels like a normal tyre and the ride characteristics are not changed at all for a given pressure. It is light weight, at about 80g per tyre, and sits in the widest part of the tyre as you ride down the trail.
The makers of the Huck Norris make a number of claims on their website about the benefits of using the inserts. One of them is the ability to run a lighter tyre, saving rotational weight and still protecting your rim from damage. Whilst the Huck Norris will certainly protect the rim from impact damage it will not improve the tyre’s ability to withstand cuts, slices and other punctures that will be more likely with a lighter tyre.
Also, many people will be running a heavier casing tyre because of the improved support it offers in turns and because you can run lower pressures. So, when you are deciding whether to run a lighter tyre or not, you need to decide why you were running the heavier tyre in the first place?
If you were running it for the feel in the corners, then stick with it, as the Huck Norris won’t help support you and the lighter tyre won’t give you the support you need either. If you were running the heavy tyres to protect your rims from rocky, gnarly terrain where you frequently pinch punctured, then the lighter setup with Huck Norris fitted is a viable option.
The second claim is that the Huck Norris will protect your rim from damage, and they even say that you could run down part of a trail on a flat tyre (for instance at a race) and not ‘destroy’ your rim. Having run the Huck Norris inserts for about 6 months, either in both tyres, or sometimes just in the rear, I can confirm that on the whole, it does what it is supposed to, protecting your rim and preventing flats.
In particular I spent a week riding rock-infested back country trails in the French Pyrenees, a place I know well and a place that is savage on tyres and rims. All week I avoided the dreaded punctures, despite numerous square edge hits and literally thousands of pointy rocks trying to kill my wheels. You could see that the insert was doing its job as well, because on inspection, it had taken quite a bit of impact damage, creating small tears and scars in the foam. Any one of these could have resulted in a pinch flat for sure.
Like any burly tyre or insert system, nothing gives you 100% puncture protection and that was the case here as on the last run of the last day in France I absolutely nailed my back wheel onto a rocky ledge. I mean really nailed. Full bottom-out. Loud smashing noise, followed by the hiss of air and sealant pissing all over the trail. It would not seal up, and a CO2 canister would not re-inflate the tyre, so I slowly rolled the last 200m of trail and then down a 1km road to the uplift van.
On inspection, a number of things had happened:
1. The tyre was a write off, with a big gash in the casing.
2. The rim was a write off, with a large bulge, 6 baggy spokes and a Pringle-like shape.
3. Having rolled down the road, the Huck Norris had split in two and folded itself up inside my tyre.
To be honest, this was the type of impact that would kill pretty much any rim, and maybe the Huck Norris, reduced the damage and prevented total failure of the wheel, but the point to take away is that no system gives your rim or tyre total protection. I am glad to say that for the rest of the test period I have not had a single puncture whilst using Huck Norris. I was also able to re-attach the ends and continue to use the original insert that had come apart after the puncture incident.
Good:
- Light weight.
- Easy to fit.
- Simpler than the competition.
- Makes a tyre easier to seat.
Could do better:
- Not an awful lot.
What do we think?
If you get a lot of pinch flats and ride a lot of rocky trails then it is certainly worth considering, especially for the rear tyre. It is super-easy to fit, comes in different widths and sizes and there are no drawbacks to using it. I can see it being a popular addition to expensive carbon wheelsets, protecting your investment and only adding minimal weight to the system.
Finally, if you are riding chairlifts in the Alps or further afield then adding some weight and protection is literally a no-brainer and a system like Huck Norris does a great job for less money than most of the competition. I will continue to use it on my rear wheel all year round, and will add the front insert for racing and uplift days or if I ever run lighter weight tyres.
