Mavic wheels with sealed rims and special spokes

Are they ok, or a load of trouble? They wouldn’t be my first choice but for some OEMs they are.

Taking the obvious mitigation of taking a few spare spokes with you on any trip, which is simplified by the whole wheelset having the same length spokes.

My benchmark is DT XM481s on Hope Pro 4, only thing I’ve done is routine freehub clean and regrease.

my only experience is on the road bike (so much less likely to break a spoke!), the main advantage seems to be they were ridiculously easy to set up tubeless!

Got Crossmax on a hardtail. Lovely. Got 2 sets for my commute/gravel/adventure bike, Ksyriums and Allroads. No trouble at all. Not sure if the nipples will even turn on the threads on my Ksyriums cos they’re 10 years old now, haven’t needed to touch them.

Had two sets of older Crossmax and Crossmax XL – both were utterly reliable, the one time we wore out a free hub (after 3 boys and 4 years of riding) it was easy to replace. Well sealed, never broke a spoke despite buying a couple spare in case.

I would again.

I’ve got mavic deemax wheels on my Mondraker ebike and it came with a few spokes in the box from the shop as well as a little tyre lever with a bit on it for holding the bladed spokes. I’ve just ordered a Mondraker Raze now which has the crossmax wheels that (I think) are shown in the picture and I’m hoping that comes with some spares too.

In terms of the rim being like the old UST systems, I reckon that’s a good thing as I’ve had a few broken spokes pierce the tape over the years and often the slow leaks I get on my wheels are where the tape has got damaged by tyre levers or stuck to the tyre and lifted off.

Got Ksyrium and Aksium, which I’ve had for over 10 years. Utterly bomb proof. I had some 26″ cross rides, ridden in all weathers,, never needed to do anything with them until the rims wore out. The Aksiums are sat on my CX bike now, despite the wheels saying ‘not for off road’. I’m bike packing with them loaded up in a couple of weeks.

I have some Ksyriums on the commuter. They’re brilliant, and the freehub noise is so much better than anything else I’ve had! One thing to bear in mind is that the nipples on this type of rim can sieze into the rim after a while, so if you do bash them, you might not be able to re-true it.

Two sets of E-Deemax 29 here and after the previous Mavic SL / ST some things have changed, some things are the same.
Ratchet hubs, not pawls and 8000kms on a full power Brose, all is running sweetly.
Freehub I think has lost that silly nylon bush that howled when it was worn.
Simple standard size cartridge bearings now
Rim bed still fully sealed and tubeless can be done with a track pump. Simples
Rim is pretty damn hard, resisting dings and rock impacts. Way better than OEM Roval
Wheels came with spare spokes and having checked, freehub spares are widely available
Tubeless valves:- replacements need care selecting and have to match the rim centre channel.
Flat blade spokes will be a faff if they need re-tensioning.
Real world rider weight limits no not just for weight weenies
All the stickers fell off really quickly but, well, whatever.

I had some 26″ cross rides, ridden in all weathers,, never needed to do anything with them

Oh yeah, I bought some 29ers to go on my son’s hardtail that he was riding to school in about year 9 (he was 15). They’re still on it and he used it everyday to ride to school, then took it to Uni to get around the Exeter campus. He messaged me once to say the freehub was slipping, but I think he sorted that, and the wheelset is still going on that bike. (he’s 22 next month)! Talk about value for money.

(crikey, I forgot about the 26″ Crossrides on my singlespeed cos that hasn’t had much use lately, but they are flippin old too )

I used to have Crossmax wheels, the sealed rim bed made tubeless ridiculously easy and changing a spoke was possible without removing the tyre. The only downside is that you need proprietary spokes so worth buying a few spares

Yeah I used to like the Crossmax and XA wheels.

Mavic were always good for ride feel and hub reliability IME, and easy tubelessing as mentioned.

I wish I’d kept the XAs I sold on a bike a couple of years ago, lovely trail wheels.

Tubeless valves:- replacements need care selecting and have to match the rim centre channel.

Good to know, going to fit inserts and hadn’t thought of that. I see they’re square base.

Was going to get the Rimpact valves as the flat base makes them less prone to sinking into the insert like Peatys did. But they’re a cone base.

The muc off ones look like they’ll sink. Juice lubes looks a better bet. Any other recommendations for inserts with a square base?

Well if this is anything to go by, the standard valves should be insert compatible

https://nsmb.com/articles/mavic-crossmax-xl-s-wheels/

last photo in the slider

Or seen here https://www.bike-components.de/en/Mavic/UST-Valve-Round-p90352/

B&B, some DT swiss ones work too. The shape is the important bit.
https://www.bike-components.de/de/DT-Swiss/Tubelessventil-fuer-MTB-Tubelesskit-p16219/

The key thing is insert compatible, those aren’t. Needs holes in the sides of the base.

Anyway looks like the standard ones will do.

I opened a thread on the lack of love for Mavic wheels a while ago , the general consensus was they were very good but just not promoted as much as the usual suspects. They went through a bad commercial phase a little while ago but seem to be back on track now. Certainly high on my list when I buy a new set.

So now I have them.

Fitting tyres is a bit of a pain as the rim bed is flat aside from the channel in the middle, much narrower than in the photo I posted. Only one tyre bead fits in it, so the tucking bead into the rim bed to create some slack trick only works for the first side. Makes fitting inserts difficult too.

40mm valves included are a bit short due to the special shaped rim washer, my pumps do fit on but only just.

Surely you only need one bead to fit? Once side one is on you can push it out of the way to fit side two.

Ah yes. That might have happened. Either way it’s more difficult than an XM481 to both get the tyre on to seat the beads, then after removing one side to tuck the tyre back on around the insert.

I bought some Ksyrium SL road wheels about 4 years ago and they were super easy to set up tubeless, the hubs were quiet and they span for ever. But all the flat blade spokes rusted within about 18 months, Mavic re spoked them for free but it does seem like a design fault

I was chatting to my LBS guy the other day and both agreed that the wheels basically work great, but the fly in the ointment is the bespoke spokes which become obsolete after five or six years, which is infuriating if you have an older set that you want to keep going.

I run a set of Ksyrium SLRs, I think they are,  for best on the road bike and when I snapped a spoke in Portugal there were two problems: one was simply sourcing a replacement spoke, I was lucky, someone else had one for a similar Mavic wheel that snapped. The other issue with the SL was that the alloy spokes on one side of the rear wheel – the other side are composite – need to be replaced en masse if one snaps on you. I think because the low spoke count stresses the other spokes quite majorly if ridden in this state at all, if you can.

I thought the latter was maybe not true, but snapped another spoke shortly afterwards… I think this may be specific to the SLs, but in any case, stock up on spare spokes and take some with you if you’re on holiday. Maybe carry one on a road bike, once the spoke went, the tension was high enough and the spoke count low enough that there was no way it was fitting through the frame 🙁

TLDR: not necessarily ‘a load of trouble’ but unique spokes can be a relative pain in the backside and I worry about long-term spares availability and repairability.

I had a set of Crossmax ST USTs on my old Mega and they were awesome wheels. Very rarely needed the spokes tightened and the bearings seemed to run forever.

Also have a set of Allroad tubeless wheels on my gravel bike and they’re great too, although they just use normal spokes.

I raced an old pair of Ksyriums on a cross bike, tubeless with 33c cross tyres. They were bombproof. But I would not take them on a tour or training camp where a replacement spoke might be needed. I replaced a spoke in one with another out of an older wheel. I’ve never bought a pair new though so have spares now. Nowadays I’ve moved onto basic handbill wheels. Still like Mavic rims, but replaceable standard Sapim spokes – just in case. Wheel technology moved on to deeper carbon rims, but Mavic CXP33 rims, Dura Ace hubs and Sapim Race spokes are still my favourite riding wheels on the lanes around here.

I’ve had Factory Mavic wheels for some time, although all used standard nipples. I’ve never broke a spoke, and even pushed my 24/20 spoke Aksiums on a loaded CX bike, with camping gear, over four days on the KAW.

Mavic lost a lot of momentum when everyone was moving to wider, tubeless rims.  Mavic’s offerings were still narrow, heavy  and not really anymore robust, nor were they cheaper.  I also think that once they went over £900 (more than CK) in 2010 and were the same weight as handbuit offerings,  people went elsewhere.  I unhooked a spoke from an SLR wheelset on big, unexpected impact – the wheel did stay true, which was impressive.

Had some Crossmax XLs back in the day. The big failure mode was that the threaded ally nipple would seize into the threaded ally rim and then dissolve into powder when you tried to true them, necessitating buying a wheel’s worth of spokes at vast expense (nipple permanently mounted on the spoke) as very, very few places would sell them individually as they weren’t that popular.

It was also possible to bounce the spokes out of the slots in the hub if you flexed the wheel too hard (eg crash or sideways landing), which led to the aforementioned nipple issues when trying to reseat them.

I’ve got a set of 29er Mavic XAs that I bought a couple of years back for £125 in the big Evans clearout. I just regarded them as sacrificial wheels to facilitate a move onto modern standards but, 19 months and 3500km of use later I can’t fault them. Can’t comment on tubeless because I’m running them with tubes, but I’ve never touched them with a spoke key. The HG freehub wasn’t badly gouged when I took the cassette off a couple of weeks back. Spin forever. I suppose I should service them at some point but I’m currently 500km into a bike packing trip round the Highlands, which is well outwith the design brief of a set of 24 spoke wheels. Short version: very pleasantly surprised.