I made the costly mistake of buying hookless carbon wheels from Lightbicycle. I assumed incorrectly that if it was hookless it would have stated that in the title. Instead it was in small print on the 2nd page.

Anyways, my Maxxis recon xc tires will not seat. I am looking for xc "hookless" tire recommendations.

my google foo not working when I type in hookless mtb tire it just brings up the normal tires
https://www.biketiresdirect.com/prod...xo-tr-mtb-tire

when I go click on them they all say tubeless but none of them say HOOKLESS.

Hookless refers to the rim NOT the tire. That's why you aren't finding tires that say HOOKLESS.

Any tubeless tires should seat on the rim.

really?


I have seated this same tire several times on my the stock alloy hooked rim that came with my Blur. With the hooked rim I used the trick witht he tire lever where you can half seat the tire onto rim and then used the charged cansister to seat the tire. I have seated 50+ tubeless tires. only a handful of MTB tires though.


I have used this for the last 3 years. it has worked fine on road tires and MTB tires when I do the the half seat the wheel trick.
https://www.levelninesports.com/prod...rive-bike-pump


if you fwd to about the 2 minute mark it shows how he seat the bead. I have used this trick for mtb tires on my hooked rims and my friends mtb tires.


With the hookless I can't do that trick where you can manual seat the bead on part of the tire.


Maybe I need an air compressor then.

is hookless tires only for road tire then?
https://www.globalcyclingnetwork.com...-be-using-them

Wonder if your tire is bad. How many times has it been taken off and put on a rim?

I have 6 sets of hookless rims set up tubeless between my mountain and fat bikes. A mix of Carbon and Aluminum HED wheels and some chinese ones from BTLOS.

I have Bontrager Team Issue set up on these wheels:

https://btlos.com/mountain-bike/mtb-...arbon-wheelset

I think my bike pump is just not up to the task of hookless mtb rims. It works great for my hooked rims and tubeless road and gravel tires. On mtb tires it would not seat the tires unless I did that trick in the youtube video where I use the tire levers to manual seat the bead of the tire for about 1/3 to 1/2 the wheel and even then it would take 2 or 3 tries.

I ordered 2 gallon air compressor last night. If that does not work I will buy some new tires.

So, weird they have hookless tires for road and gravel but not mtb tires. Such a great non-standard. ha-ha

thanks for your help.








https://support.specialized.com/tire...s/gravel-tires

The one time I had a new tire that wouldn’t seat, even with our compressor, I threw a tube in it and let it sit overnight. The next morning, I pulled the tube out, and the tire seated right away.

thanks for the tip.

I was just going to say the same thing.

Also...Alll of my MTB and Fatbike tires...I set up with a hand pump. I don't have a charger pump like the Lezyne. I use the Joe Blow Fat pump.

I've had a stubborn tire before that wouldn't even seat after being hit with my big 80 gallon/16 CFM air compressor or the other usual methods.. I ended up running a tie-down strap around the circumference of the tire/rim, which forced the bead out towards the sides of the rim...this worked quite well.

My air compressor and accessories came today.

25ft 3/8 hose
type t fittings ( I was car mechanic so all my previous tools have this )

with the merlin tire air chuck and the various adapters to presta did NOT work. not even close my hand pump with charge canister above pushed a bigger rush of air all it once.

I went back to harbor freight and bought this HIGH FLOW air blow gun and it worked first try.

Hopefully this info will be useful for someone else.

makes it wonder if I was to cut off the end of my bicycle pump air chuck and install this high flow air gun if it would have worked. ha-ha

2nd tire I had to use this trick. ha-ha

thanks.

Glad you got it sorted out.

However, I don’t think the difficulty you experienced had anything to do with the rim being hookless. Some rim/tire combos are just harder than others be they hooked or hookless.

For the record, "hookless compatible" is what is shown in your chart of road/gravel tires. Some road bike tires require hooked rims in order to prevent a blow-off at high pressure. Mountain tires are not usually inflated to high pressure, so most if not all are "hookless compatible", so the manufacturers don't explicitly label them as such.

As far as I am aware, all aluminum rims are hooked. Some carbon rims are hooked, Reserve has "semi-hooked." Many (eg Enve) don't have hooks. It is cheaper to manufacture carbon rims without hooks, and some claim you are less likely to have pinch flats (which apparently can happen with tubeless).

while you are probably right and my tires pretty old so really floppy around. If I had a hooked rim I can use the trick I posted above in the youtube video I posted above where you manually seat the tire on the bead as much as possible. I can usually seat 1/4 to 1/3 of the rim on both sides. Then with my canister bike pump I have been able to get on any tires I want. Sometimes a takes a few tries.

yeah, just learning this now. I mostly ride road/gravel and have been hearing about hookless rims forever and how some tires need to be designed hookless. I did not know mtb tires where different until Pjr71 said so.

my carbon road wheels from lightbicycle are hooked. I would never buy a hookless rim. well unless I did by mistake and that little tid-bit was buried on the 2nd page in small print. ha-ha

cool

What is cool? What is good info? You are posting nothing in slightly recent but currently dormant threads. If you have opinions or like something that is great but provide a little context like hey @(insert user name here) I really dug what you said about "x' Just rehashing old threads to give a one or two word response that doesn't move the needle along is odd. If you are trying to get your post count up which is fine get involved with the forums have an opinion, have something to say beyond a stereotypical teenager shown in T.V. and movies who says very little. Let us know more about you. ? Be an active participant not just someone standing in the field as the game is trying to happen. Actually kick the ball to someone not just in a random direction a very short distance.