Reviews of Products
Manufacturer Profile: Mavic
Why do we carry what we carry? This is one of the best questions you could ask of any dealer. At Fit Werx, we spend a lot of time researching any product that we carry. While we lose some sales because we are not willing to always jump on the latest marketing bandwagon or just carry any brand people are interested in, we sleep well knowing that we offer our athletes products that work better, last longer and perform better.
Even though we have access to many brands we do not stock, these profiles are designed to help you understand the value we see in the brands we stock and why they are category leaders.
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Company Statistics | Model Overviews |
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Company Statistics:Location: Metz Tessy, France |
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Pros of Mavic Wheels:• While no wheel or company is perfect, Mavic wheels are about as reliable and are as easy to service as they get. Considerations of Mavic Wheels: • With a couple of notable exceptions, Mavic wheels are not particularly aerodynamic or the lightest.
What stands out about Mavic Wheels/Attributes:Mavic has branched into different categories through the years, they have even produced full groupos (including the forward thinking, but finicky, Zap and Mektronic electronic groups) as well as cycling computers. However, wheels and rims are still Mavic’s main focus and where we feel their products are at the top of their game and this is where we are going to focus for now. The short story as to what stands out with Mavic wheels is innovation, lateral stiffness, durability, great rim quality and one of the most user friendly hub designs ever conceived. The longer story is as follows: |
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History and design success is on Mavic’s side. Mavic can take credit for the modern bicycle wheel as much as any company in the business. In 1926, they invented the first production aluminum rim and by the 1930′s they were being used in the Tour de France. While we may look back on this as no big deal, Mavic’s aluminum rims were not just an improvement, they redefined bicycle wheels (thus redefining the bicycle) and allowed for all the technology we have available to us today to be a reality. No other company has brought more significant innovation to bicycle wheel technology than Mavic. | |
| Mavic is about wheels first and foremost. While they have built products in other categories (even Tour de France winning grouppos under the likes of Greg LeMond), wheels remain their primary focus and are what has made them the biggest wheel manufacturer in the world. While biggest is not always best, it is hard to question Mavic’s approach to developing new wheel products and improving upon existing technology.
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Mavic’s Helium wheel in 1996 was arguably the first wheel developed using a system based approach. Mavic had produced hubs and rims for years and the only item they were missing to make a full wheel was the spokes. This being said, Mavic’s freewheel only hubs were getting long in the tooth as freewheels were more than on-their way out – they were becoming extinct. While Mavic could have just added a cassette body to their 501 hubset and had a nice set of wheels, they realized that they could further improve the design if they stopped trying to make it compatible with pre-existing rims and spokes. The Helium project started from the ground up with a new | |
| hubset using 26/28 spokes front/rear (instead of the usual 32 spokes) and that used straight-pull spokes to eliminate the weak link on most spokes (the elbow). Mavic had spokes specifically built to work with this new hub and paired it up to a new lighter and stiffer rim design specifically designed simultaneous to the hub. The result was the first factory designed and built wheelset that was round, evenly tensioned and light enough to go head-to-head with the handbuilt wheels that had dominated the high-end wheel market to date. The package was eye-catching with red rims and hubs and was laterally stiffer, for its weight, than most hand-built wheels. The writing was on the wall – the age of the wheel system had come and, like the Coneheads, it came from France. | ||
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The Helium sold well and inspired a slew of companies to start producing factory wheels. Mavic, not one to sit back for long, saw that the Helium was more than a trend and they went back to the drawing boards to further improve the concept. Mavic engineers realized that while they had managed to hit their weight target with the Helium, there were still potentially large gains in lateral stiffness and responsiveness to be made. What was holding back wheels from being more laterally stiff (while maintaining a reasonable weight) was not so much rim and hub technology, but spoke technology. The biggest limitation to lateral stiffness was the | |
| traditional stainless steel spoke and they knew that they needed to use a new spoke design with a new shape and material if they were going to truly improve stiffness. Seeing the success of the rather traditional appearing Helium (other than the red color), Mavic felt confident enough to allow their engineers to not be restrained by existing designs and let them go about designing the wheel system they wanted to without regard for pre-existing technology.
Enter the Ksyrium – Dressed all in matte black, the Ksyrium was like Darth Vader in “The Empire Stikes Back” - seriously evil looking and more than a little powerful. Outside of the cassette body and a few washers and bearings, the Mavic Ksyrium was all alloy. The Ksyrium used a new IsoPulse hub design in conjunction with radical oversized Maxtal spokes that were physically theaded into a new FORE technology rim to create a wheel that was competitively light, but also significantly stiffer than just about anything on the market to date. From hub to rim to spoke, the Ksyrium was built using stiffer materials and design and the result was a wheel that not only looked different, it rode different. After Lance rode some of the early pre-production units to victory in a few stages of his first Tour overall win, Mavic knew that the Ksyrium SSC was likely going to be a run-away success.
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When I had a chance to get a pair of early production Ksyriums in the fall of 1999, I jumped. To this day, I remember my first ride on them as it was one of those rides that just made you glad that you had tripped upon cycling as a sport at some point in your life. I was in Bellingham, Washington and riding down a beautiful piece of road along the Pacific called Chuckanut Drive. Chuckanut is one of those epic pieces of road with relatively low traffic, bordered by steep hills to the east and dropping straight into the ocean on the west, the road twists and turns for about 15 impressive miles. I was riding a prototype frame that day mounted with Ksyrium | |
| SSC wheels and the first thing I remembered about the ride was that I had never been on a bike that accelerated the way this one did – I was riding a gear higher and I had no right to be able to do that based on my fitness. Either way, for some reason, (please excuse the further propogation of the lame Star Wars metaphor) the Force was with me that day as I was riding a bike that accelerated like a TIE fighter with ultra fuel in the tank.
When I got back to the factory, we put the wheels in a fixture that measured lateral deflection and compared them to the hand built wheels I usually rode. The difference was phenomenal. I rode that frame with some variation of Mavic Ksyrium regularly for four years straight after that ride. Within a few years, the Ksyrium had proven itself to be one of the most durable and user-friendly wheels too. Along with subtle evolutionary changes to the Ksyrium SSC, including milling out excess materials between spokes to reduce weight (ISM), the Ksryium line soon expanded to include the lower price point Ksyrium Elite and Ksyrium Equipe (about as stripped down a wheel as could be made and still be argued that it had any Ksyrium in its blood). On the tenth anniversary of the Helium (in 2006) Mavic introduced the Ksyrium ES with a new lighter asymetric rim, red hubs, oversized carbon front hub body, and a single red spoke to commemorate the Helium. In 2008, Mavic turned another page in wheel system evolution with the introdution of the carbon spoked R-Sys and full carbon Cosmic Carbone Ultimate. Taking the systems based approach that the Helium and then the Ksyrium started, and bringing it to the next level with composites. Every year when we test and review wheels, Mavic continues to rate really well on a wide variety of important variables and they end up with some of the strongest overall multi-purpose wheel ratings. Mavic continues to try to address where they are not as strong (aerodynamics, lightweight and being too stiff for some riders) with new wheel designs like the Cosmic Carbone Ultimate and R-Sys without forgetting what they do really well (lateral stiffness, durability, great rim quality, one of the most user friendly hub designs ever conceived). We will see what the future brings, but for now, Mavic still makes multi-purpose wheels that work better for a wider range of riders than just about any other company.
Key Mavic Wheel Terminology:Mavic likes acronyms and meaningless (at least in English) abbreviations. Here’s an overview of the most common ones that are used in relation to Mavic wheel technology: |
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ISM – Inter Spoke Milling. Mavic’s patented hub design that removes excess material on the rim between spoke holes to minimize weight without compromising rigidity. ISM first showed up in the second generation Mavic Ksyrium SSC. In the picture of a Ksyrium SL rim to the left, if you look carefully, you can see that near the spoke nipples and valve stem there is more material than between them. The indented area is ISM. | |
| UB Control – Usine Brut Control - The translation on this does not add up to much, so we’ll just describe it. UB Control is the act of milling the braking surfaces so they are smooth and uniform as possible. This improves braking modulation, consistency and strength and thus minimizes the likelihood of vibrations or shimmy. This is found in the majority of Mavic alloy rim equipped wheels, including the Ksyrium series, R-Sys and Cosmic Carbone and is pictured above (the silver milled braking surface).
CD – Couche Dure – “Durable Layer”. A process that puts a micro-layer on the rim to improve durability and slows down brake wear. This is more common on Mavic’s rims than their factory built wheels. ISOPULSE – Mavic’s patented spoke lacing pattern used in Ksyium Elite, SL and Premium wheels. Designed to keep spoke tension as even as possible and to transmit power as directly from the hub to the rim as possible. ISOPULSE acheives this by using a very rigid spoke design, direct lacing (note the radial laced driveside, only possible with a very rigid spoke design) and feeding the spokes as directly into as rigid as possible a hub body. |
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FORE - Found in the Ksyrium series at and above the Ksyrium Elite level and in the R-Sys, this is the process of piercing only one wall (the outer) of the rim to affix the spoke. This strengthens the overall rim structure and improves rigidity. The Mavic R-Sys rim pictured to the left shows the unpierced outer rim wall.
MAXTAL – An aluminum alloy that is very light for its weight. A similar alloy has been used on the TGV super trains that rocket people around the French countryside in comfort at high speed. Mavic uses MAXTAL on all Ksyrium wheels that are Ksyrium Elite or better. |
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| SUP – Soude Usine Process – very loosely translated = “Factory Welded Process”. Rims are made from long bent extrusions of alloy. The ends of the extrustion, once bent into a circle, needs to be joined and this can be done through an inexpensive and rough pin joint or by welding. All better quality aluminum rims are welded instead of using looser and less expensive pin joints as welding is more consistent, laterally stiffer, and more durable. When combined with a braking surface milling process like UB Control, a welded rim also offers smoother braking performance and better modulation. SUP is found on all alloy rim Ksyrium, R-Sys and Cosmic wheels.
QRM - “Qualite Roulements Mavic” – Quality Mavic Ball Bearings. Mavic’s standard sealed cartridge bearings that are used in all of their non-adjustable hubs (below Ksyrium Elite). QRM+ – Mavic’s best quality adjustable sealed cartridge bearing. Used in all wheels Ksyrium Elite or above. R2R – “Rim to Rim” spoke technology where a carbon spoke spans the full diameter of the rim, bridging the hub. Designed to minimize weight and maximize lateral stiffness,R2R is found on the Cosmic Carbone Ultimate and Cosmic Carbone SLR. Zicral – The lightweight and strong alloy used in the Ksyrium spokes. H2 – Hammer Hardening – A localized hardening of a small section of rim material that is under increased load. Hammer Hardening could be used around the spoke junctures with the rim to minimize cracking at the nipple. FTS-L – Force Transfer System Light - Mavic’s simple three pawl cassette body design that allows their hubs to be easily disassembled and serviced while providing quick engagement. Pictured below right. M10 – Shimano/SRAM compatible cassette body. ED10 – Campagnolo compatible cassette body. MP3 – Mavic’s extended warranty and “no fault” protection program. While no wheel is impossible to destroy and some riders can wreck just about anything, Mavic offers MP3, which costs just 8% of the purchase price of the wheelset and not only doubles the warranty to two years, but also covers almost all “no fault” damage as well. With MP3, no matter how hard you are on wheels, if you choose a well matched Mavic, you won’t have to buy a new pair of wheels for at least two years. Mavic makes no-nonesense wheels for people that ride. While not often being the lightest or the most resiliant wheels, they are wheels designed to be ridden and require as little maintenence on the rider’s part as possible.
Model Overview:Please visit our on-line store wheel section for specific model information. Model Comparisons and Ratings:
Fit Werx Wheel Rewards Program:Performance bicycle wheels should not be treated like a commodity and you get more than just a wheel when you buy from Fit Werx. The Fit Werx Wheel Rewards program offers you value that is well beyond just a competitive price. The Wheel Protection Program offers you the following security and protection: • Advice. Fit Werx is nationally known for asking the right questions and then providing you with real answers that apply to your individual needs and allow you to choose the optimal wheel for your needs. Not everyone should be on the same wheel… • Competitive pricing. Our regular pricing on wheels is competitive and we will always work to meet or beat a price quote from an authorized dealer of a product. • Wheel Protection Program (WPP). Every Fit Werx Event/Race wheel protects its owner against down time due to repairs or warranty work. For two years from purchase, if your Fit Werx event/race wheels are out of service due to a warranty or repair situation at a time when really need them for an event or race, we will provide you with a pair of demo event/race wheels for up to two weeks of time at no charge to you (beyond shipping). • Free Tire Mounting. Even on tubulars. Our skilled technicians take the time to install your tires properly and your initial install costs nothing extra. A $40-$60 value on a pair of tubulars. • Full Wheel Tolerance & Tension Check. We do not rely on the factories to do final detail work. Our technicians are some of the most detail oriented in the business and every wheel we sell is hand inspected and adjusted to make sure it meets our standards. • Warranty. Fit Werx is an authorized dealer of every product we carry. Unlike many internet sites and auctions (where many products are even stolen), anything you purchase from Fit Werx is new and has a full warranty.
Ordering:Visit the Mavic wheel section of our on-line store or call 866-833-4FIT (4348). Visit the Tech Center for more articles on a wide variety of bike technology and fitting subjects. If you have questions or are interested in a product, don’t hesitate to stop in, call, or e-mail one of our locations. We continue to build our inventory and have one of the best selections of in-stock products anywhere in the northeast. We are always here to answer questions and we ship daily if you need anything.
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