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Mavic Crossmax SL
By James Sharp
The two most important parts of the bicycle are the frame and the wheels. The frame angles dictate how fast the bicycle will steer, but the wheels, and to a lesser degree the tires, play a large part in how a bike feels. Whether it accelerates quickly, feels lighter while climbing and tracks straight in the rough is, for the most part, in the wheels. Put heavy wheels on even the lightest race bike and it will feel sluggish, conversely put light, minimalistic wheels on all but the heaviest bicycle and it will feel snappier.
Mavic knows wheels. Their Crossmax wheels were among the first, if not the first, high-end pre-built mountain bike wheelset. Over the years, the wheels have become lighter, stiffer, tubeless and available as disc brake specific. The spokes have gone from double-butted steel, to bladed Zicral (an aluminum alloy). The Crossmax wheel is still at the top of the race wheel heap, for now.
Aluminum isn’t known for its fatigue resistance, which is why it isn’t the normal choice for a spoke material. In fact for cyclic loads, aluminum has a finite life regardless of the load. Fortunately, it has been shown that in a properly built wheel the tension in the spokes is high enough to create a static load situation. This means that the tension on the spokes is the same at all times. In this situation, the Zicral spokes are superior--Mavic claims 10% stronger--than stainless steel spokes. Good thing, because the spokes are more expensive to replace and more than likely your local shop won’t have them in stock anyway.
It seems that Mavic has done their homework, I have spent the summer pounding our samples and they have stayed as true as the day we received them. In fact, I haven’t had any problems with them at all, not a broken spoke, not a wobble, not a flat spot. These were my wheels of choice for an all day 70-mile single-track epic that had everything from baby head boulders to roots to smooth pine-needle-covered trail. I knew they were up to the job and they didn’t let me down.
I mentioned earlier that the wheels are lightweight. How light? On our scales they came in at 774 grams for the front wheel and 915 grams for the rear, without skewers. They weighed 827 and 974 grams with, respectively. These weights are almost exactly Mavic’s claimed weights. There aren’t many out there that are as light or lighter, and of the wheels that are as light overwhelming majority aren’t tubeless.
There are some quirks, however. For example, the drive side end cap on the rear hub is knurled, while the non-drive side is smooth. Normally this wouldn’t cause me to pause, but on a disc brake equipped bike, there is a tremendous amount of force on the non-drive side hub/frame interface. I would like to see that end cap knurled in the future, as it is on every other rear wheel I have seen recently. We didn’t really have any issues, per se, but it means that the rider needs to be that much more cognizant of their skewer tightness.
Summary: Aesthetically, the Crossmax SL’s are at the top the high-end race wheel heap. The straight-pull bladed silver spokes and silver rim are about as beautiful as any wheel out there. Performance-wise, there is little to fault. They are stiff and strong enough for anything reasonable. These are not jumping wheels, downhill wheels or urban assault wheels, but if you keep that in mind they will last a very, very long time. I didn’t take it easy on the Crossmax, and they never flinched. At $850, they should be about perfect, and they are about perfect. There are few wheels that are even in the same league as the Crossmax SL’s, and you pay for that exclusivity. In addition to the skewers the wheels also come with a spoke wrench, a tool to hold the straight-pull spokes during truing, a tool to adjust the bearings and a spoke magnet for bicycle computers.
James Sharp is a contributing editor for GearReview.com specializing in mountain biking.
For more information, contact:
Mavic Sports Inc.
Phone: 978-469-8400
www.mavic.com
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