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The new Venom 330 is Avon’s biggest tire yet. This hefty rear
tire is more than a foot wide and features one of the lowest sidewall
profiles ever seen on a motorcycle tire. |
 ather
together a roundtable-panel of bike builders who all have more than
just a couple customs under their belts and ask them all just one question.
Dollars to donuts you’ll get the same answer from
everyone: If you’re building a bike that you want to sell fast,
win some awards with and get featured in the magazines you better put
one humongous tire on the back. That’s just the way it is. Customers
will walk right past everything else on the showroom floor to get at
that big-tire bike, and it’s the same with show judges and magazine
photographers. Big tires are sexy. Big tires sell bikes.And now Avon has its biggest tire yet, the 330/30R17 AM42 Venom-R. This giant was introduced in Sturgis last year as original equipment for the 2005 Bourget bikes, and now it’s been released to everyone. The 330 Venom was designed for rims measuring between a whopping 11.5 and 12.5 inches in width, and this tire has one of the lowest sidewall profiles yet seen on a motorcycle tire. It’s a big chunk of rubber that’s taking the custom bike world by storm with its ultra-low profile and modern good looks. And coming from Avon and being a Venom it’s got a lot more than that, too. For starters, this new brute is V-rated for speeds of up to 149 MPH. Being a Venom at heart, the 330’s casing–just like those Avon 300s introduced last year–was specially developed for ultra-low rolling resistance, even in a tire this big. And of course these tires are radials, with tough Aramid belts for added stability. The 330 can be paired with a radial, bias belted or crossply front tire, and while the 330 has one of the lowest sidewall profiles yet seen on a motorcycle tire, viewed from the rear this one’s as big as big gets. It’s more than a foot wide. The 330’s super-low aspect ratio lets you show off plenty of wheel. And speaking of wheels, the 330–and the 300 before it–feature an Avon-exclusive “rim protector” as an integral part of its almost-not-there sidewall. It’s molded-in and runs around the entire perimeter of the sidewall. It’s there to protect the wheel from damage arising from inadvertent bumps or grazes against curbs and such. Given the fact that any wheel big enough to mount an Avon 330 is, needless to say, a pretty expensive piece of metal that rim protector is a welcome addition, indeed. Avon’s introduced a wide selection of front tires to go with this new 330 rear, too. The Venom-R range now includes the AM41 120/70R19, 100/90H19, 120/70-21, 130/70R18, 140/70V18 and 150/80R17. There are plenty other Avons that’ll work with the new 330, too. The RoadRunner tires for instance, sized 90/90H-19, 130/90H-16 and 90/90H-21 are all exceptional all-weather tires with a 4-ply nylon construction. RoadRunners make a great custom-bike tire. Their aggressive tread patterns and compounds, both designed to enhance the grip, look great teamed with that big Venom rear. It’s a nice match. When Avon Tires launched its 230/60H15 back in 1998 there were some who thought motorcycle tires couldn’t get any wider. How wrong they were. Three years later Avon answered with the massive and still wildly popular 250/40HR18 Venom R. This is the tire that really captured the imagination of custom bike builders the world over, the tire that kicked the whole big-tire look into hyper gear. And then just last year Avon dropped that giant twin bomb of the 300/40R17 and 300/35R18, a couple more custom-bike tires that spawned beautifully crafted machines everywhere. Now the ante’s been upped one more time. The 330/30R17 AM42 Venom-R is here. It’s Avon’s newest, and it’s Avon’s biggest. So far. And don’t forget, there are Venoms in plenty of other sizes, too, the bread-and-butter sizes that you get calls for day in and day out. Avon Venoms are some of the most popular Harley tires ever developed, and along with those 250s, 300s and now the 330s there are Venoms sized right down to an MT90-16 rear. There are Venoms for cruising and high-load touring, there are blackwall and whitewall Venoms, there are even radial Venoms in OE sizes for the V-Rod. And now that Harley-Davidson’s using a 150 rear as original equipment on more and more of their motorcycles, and as the demand for a high-load, high-mileage tire with grip and handling in this size has skyrocketed, Avon’s offering a version of the Venom designed specifically for Harley OE replacement. It’s the 150/80HB16. It measures out to a 149 mm/5.8-inch overall width, and there’s an even wider version available for modified and custom machines, a 150/80VB16 (measuring 154 mm / 6.1-inches in overall width). And all of these Venoms are great tires. They have a much more rounded profile then an OE Harley-Davidson tire for a handling advantage that’s felt immediately. Venoms are great in the wet, they’re cool running, they have a softer compound for better grip and on top of all that they last. Properly maintained, a Venom can deliver up to twice the mileage of OE rubber, and that’s something you can sell. Something else you can sell is all that sex appeal of a big rear tire, like that just-released 330/30R17 AM42 Venom-R. This one’s as big as an Avon gets–at this point, and Drag Specialties has it and all those other Venoms in stock now. |
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his
month’s cover bike was one of the very first motorcycles to be
fitted with the new Avon 330 tire. This stunning creation by Cory Ness
was built for a “Great Biker Build-Off” program that just
ran in late February on Discovery Channel.
For more information see:
www.avonmotorcycle.com
