Mavic Wheels- Designed by the Marketing and Accounting Departments?

Mavic- the name is as well known to mountain bikers and road cyclists as Shimano or any other brand. The French company has a huge history in both forms of cycling, and their reputation for building solid light weight equipment lasts longer than I can remember.

However in recent times I feel Mavic’s products have really slipped in engineering terms. Mavic rims were once the only thing I’d consider for my Mountain Bike, and the Open Pro was the best road rim you could put on a road bike. Now however they seem to have added gimmick after gimmick until their wheels are starting to be nearly non usable.

The main example of this was the R-SYS wheels. Mavic flooded the road OEM market with these light weight, stiff riding tubular carbon fibre spoked Al clinchers. In 2010 nearly all major brands had R-SYS wheels on their near top models. Many riders loved them (and are still fans) because the wheels were light, and felt stiff. However as many found in a very painful way is that tubular CF spokes are prone to failure under compression/buckling, and fail in a very sudden and catastrophic way. Mavic claim to have fixed the problem, but the OEM market no longer wants a bar fo them.

Mavic also pioneered the Al spoke gimmick. Al is not very stiff, nor strong, nor fatigue resistant. As a result Al spokes have to have large sections which aren’t very aerodynamic. While not such an issue on a Mountain bike, the fact that Mavic wheels must have spokes replaced with expensive Mavic spokes means this is not great for a hard core rider. Not only do you not want an Al spoke to go *PING* while riding up or down a hill, you then don’t want to have to replace one or more spokes via your LBS.

My last general beef with mavic wheels is price vs. performance. Their wheels aren’t light (even if you trust their claimed weights), and they aren’t aero or offer any performance advantage over other wheels. So why the high price? Well most probably because they are Mavic, they sponsor a lot of pros, and because the can then sell really “expensive” wheels to OEMs are bargain prices. As a result you see Mavic wheels every where to give the illusion they are better wheels than they really are. To me, Mavic concentrate more on the marketing of their wheels than the engineering and true performance of their wheels.

So what do Mavic offer to us Mountain Bike customers:

CrossMax SLR

20 Al spokes- this just isn’t enough and makes them race only wheels, and then only if you aren’t hard on them or weight too much
UST rims with a solid rim bed milled left right and centre. The rim has to be solid to hold up with just 20 spokes. Still I feel the odds of denting one or warping one is a touch too high.
Hubs that can take QR, 12mm tru rear, 15mm/20mm thru front. This is great for Mavic from an accounting point of view. They only make one hubset and make you compromise. If you want QRs, why the extra mass of hubs designed much much larger? Mavic hubs have been good enough performers, but they still aren’t the most durable. Get to know your LBS if you ride Mavic wheels a lot in bad conditions.
RRP $999 1440 *claimed* weight. This isn’t actually too bad for a “top of the range wheel set” but your money really is better spent else where with bargain to be had for stronger and lighter wheels

Cross Max ST

20 Al spokes rear and 24 Al Spokes front. Huh? The pedalling and pump loads tend to be higher in the rear than the front, and 24 spokes isn’t a lot specially if you are marketing this as more of a trail wheel set.
RRP799 and 1590 grams *claimed* weight

Crosstrail

Even at the lower price point you still get a welded UST compatible rim milled between spokes in Mavic style. This is good
24 steel spokes fornt and rear. With the solid rim this is a better XC setup
15mm thru front and QR rear with Al cassette body. This is the size hub the majority of the market will be wanting.
RRP$599 and $1685 grams *claimed weight*. Finally a decent set of wheels from Mavic with a decent price!!

Well as you can see I’m critical of Mavic. They give you a lot of gimics which don’t actually help improve the performance of a wheel, but allow them to charge more. If the weight of the Crosstrail is correct it is a good buy for a general purpose race wheel, but if you want to go higher end I’d be going custom built, or to a different brand for sure.

Tags: Wheels

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