Firstly, I am new here, so hola!

I have an old (circa ’97) Cannondale F2000SL that has been sitting in my garage neglected for many years, and to breathe new life into it I am converting it into a singlespeed hack bike for getting around town.

I bought some Mavic Crossmax XLs for it in 2003 (when I was riding it XC), but they didn’t see a lot of use to be honest, and since then have been unused. When stripping the bike down to rebuild in the SS I noticed the ceramic coating on the rims was badly flaking off all over the braking surface (they are canti rims, not discs). Here is a photo of a small section:

I took them to my LBS and they called Mavic and they said as they are more than 5 years old, there are no spare parts available so basically they said I need to bin them. Considering they were over £300 when I bought them and have seen light use this seems to me a bit of a waste!

I was wondering what people thought of the idea of sanding off the ceramic coating (most can be picked off in flakes anyhow) and then the rims still being usable for around town? I assume as they are aluminium then they won’t corrode. Any advice would be much appreciated!

So you bought them 10 years ago….

Just sand them, you won’t die.

Only one way to know if it’ll work 😉

It’s a pain, but it won’t really make much difference, the rims will wear quicker obviously, but no reason to stop using them.

I had about a 3″ section of ceramic coating come off my Crossmax USTs years ago, made an annoying ticking noise when you braked, and did gradually get bigger over a few years, but didn’t really hamper the performance of the wheel.

I had similar issues with ceramic rims over the years – although caused by braking wear. I simply used them until they died.

No bad things happened.

If you sand them down then wont you just have a normal rim?

Thanks for the advice people, and of course glad to hear that I won’t die 🙄

I will just remove the worst bits then and stick them back on the bike. Cheers! 🙂

strange thing was that ceramic coatings on the less expensive Mavic SUP 117CD Ceramics I had on a ’96 Cannondale seemed to last for ever with no delamination at all

@asterix – yep, I had pairs of those too and never had these problems. The sickening thing is that even though they are ten years old, they have only seen light use for about 2 of those years!

I reckon it’s probably moisture or sommat, I suspect they’d have faired better if you’d used them. I’d not bother rubbing them down, just use as they are.

Just resurrecting this thread as I think I have something similar on my OpenPro ceramics. Stevem – did you end up using the rims and assuming nothing bad happened?