Mavic SLR and R-SYS wheel failure

MattC59

ugo.santalucia wrote:

MattC59 wrote:

SloppySchleckonds wrote:

Are there any manufacturers who make a 20 spoke rear wheel suitable for someone of 88kgs?

My Aeolus 5.0ACC have 16 front and rear. They've been great wheels, they've smashed through a number of potholes and are still straight and tight. 1600g for the pair, can't fault them really, especially as I picked them up for the bargain price of £450 !!

Rolf makes wheels with 14/16 spokes that nobody on this forum seems to talk about. I have a friend who has a set and much to my disappointment he has not yet broken them... before every ride I point at them with a "today is the day they go in the skip... "
He doesn't use them a lot though... he doesn't trust them much himself

I do often wonder how long they'll last, but I'm putting a fair few miles on them with no issues, they get used every time I go out

ugo.santalucia

DavidJB wrote:

Fulcrum wheels are bomb proof.

FInally... we had to get to page three, before someone used the word "bomb-proof"!

MattC59

DavidJB wrote:

mamba80 wrote:

if you own Fulcrum or Shimano then you may as well put the wheel in a skip.

From this statement you clearly have absolutely no idea what you're going on about. Fulcrum wheels are bomb proof. I'd also ignore all the factory wheel naysayers they have their own agendas.

Can't comment on their road wheels, but I've got a 5yr old pair of Fulcrum Red Metals on my MTB, and they have, as you say, been bomb proof !

When I replace the Aeolus' I'm either going for some Fulcrums or some particularly nice handbuilts.

DavidJB

ugo.santalucia wrote:

DavidJB wrote:

Fulcrum wheels are bomb proof.

FInally... we had to get to page three, before someone used the word "bomb-proof"!

Its expresses that they are very good wheels, yes if a bomb went off next to them I'm sure they wouldn't survive. I wonder why you're picking on my terminology when surely you should be cataloguing why 'hand-built' wheels will solve the worlds problems instead of wasting your time nit-picking the wording used in a post.

itboffin

ugo.santalucia wrote:

itsnotarace wrote:

Oh there's a surprise, it's the self-proclaimed "wheel expert" on BikeRadar forums here to chip in his 2 pence worth and tell everyone they should be using arcane, heavy handbuilts :roll: You can't help it can you?

There is a pink banner at the top with the forum rules, please read them. Rule 9 in particular:

9 ) Members are not permitted to harass or "flame" other members. Please note that this also includes the posting of taunts on a forum solely for the purpose of deriding that forum's topic and/or members.

Summer heat seems to have an adverse effect on people's nerves, right now 3-4 people a day receive a ban, beside the usual spammers. If you were using the same words with a stranger in a pub you would expect a reaction, wouldn't you? Imagine you are in that pub before posting...

Are you buying?

DavidJB

MattC59 wrote:

DavidJB wrote:

mamba80 wrote:

if you own Fulcrum or Shimano then you may as well put the wheel in a skip.

From this statement you clearly have absolutely no idea what you're going on about. Fulcrum wheels are bomb proof. I'd also ignore all the factory wheel naysayers they have their own agendas.

Can't comment on their road wheels, but I've got a 5yr old pair of Fulcrum Red Metals on my MTB, and they have, as you say, been bomb proof !

When I replace the Aeolus' I'm either going for some Fulcrums or some particularly nice handbuilts.

Spoken to about 10 people who own Fulcrum road wheels and they only ever sing their praises. I had a set of fulcrum 5 training wheels that did 15,000 miles through all weathers and all roads and they were still true the as they day I got them. The local bike shop here always sells people on fulcrums so they (and I quote) "Don't have to deal with returns of faulty wheels".

But hey guys they're not 2KG hand builds so they must be crap.

MattC59

DavidJB wrote:

MattC59 wrote:

DavidJB wrote:

mamba80 wrote:

if you own Fulcrum or Shimano then you may as well put the wheel in a skip.

From this statement you clearly have absolutely no idea what you're going on about. Fulcrum wheels are bomb proof. I'd also ignore all the factory wheel naysayers they have their own agendas.

Can't comment on their road wheels, but I've got a 5yr old pair of Fulcrum Red Metals on my MTB, and they have, as you say, been bomb proof !

When I replace the Aeolus' I'm either going for some Fulcrums or some particularly nice handbuilts.

Spoken to about 10 people who own Fulcrum road wheels and they only ever sing their praises. I had a set of fulcrum 5 training wheels that did 15,000 miles through all weathers and all roads and they were still true the as they day I got them. The local bike shop here always sells people on fulcrums so they (and I quote) "Don't have to deal with returns of faulty wheels".

But hey guys they're not 2KG hand builds so they must be crap.

I think you're looking at the wrong handbuilts if they're 2kg !

DavidJB

MattC59 wrote:

DavidJB wrote:

MattC59 wrote:

DavidJB wrote:

mamba80 wrote:

if you own Fulcrum or Shimano then you may as well put the wheel in a skip.

From this statement you clearly have absolutely no idea what you're going on about. Fulcrum wheels are bomb proof. I'd also ignore all the factory wheel naysayers they have their own agendas.

Can't comment on their road wheels, but I've got a 5yr old pair of Fulcrum Red Metals on my MTB, and they have, as you say, been bomb proof !

When I replace the Aeolus' I'm either going for some Fulcrums or some particularly nice handbuilts.

Spoken to about 10 people who own Fulcrum road wheels and they only ever sing their praises. I had a set of fulcrum 5 training wheels that did 15,000 miles through all weathers and all roads and they were still true the as they day I got them. The local bike shop here always sells people on fulcrums so they (and I quote) "Don't have to deal with returns of faulty wheels".

But hey guys they're not 2KG hand builds so they must be crap.

I think you're looking at the wrong handbuilts if they're 2kg !

Ok...Ok...I'm guilty of exaggerating for effect

robbo2011

Am I allowed to link to another forum on here? probably not so I suspect this post will be deleted.

But here is an interesting discussion about R-SYS wheels with contributions from Mavic themselves.

http://weightweenies.starbike.com/forum ... 1&start=60

matt-h

TKF wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Forget about tensile strength, that is not relevant

Incredible.

I'm going to try and stay within the rules you cling on to so dearly but you don't half speak a lot of rubbish for somebody who sells themselves as a wheel expert.

I'd wager Mavic knows a little bit more than you about making a wheel.

Just because they know more about selling a wheel does not mean they know more about making them!
Does a mechanic not know when Ford or BMW have made something to a price! It exactly the same thing!
I would wager that Ugo probably knows a hell of a lot more about wheel building than you.
Makes me laugh that you all get so precious over brands! You think they have any loyalty to you?

Matt

ugo.santalucia

NewTTer wrote:

Which is why he totally disregards the tensile strength of a material as "not relevant", when that part is operting in a full on tension environment.
You really couldnt make it up

It was taken out of context. What I said was that we were talking about fatigue and not tensile strength... read the original post, hence I said "forget about the tensile strength as it is not relevant" what I wanted to know was the fatigue behaviour. To an extent the two are correlated, but only to an extent. What happens to a mechanical part at X stress below the yield and over N cycles is not necessarily something you can extrapolate from the tensile strength. THat is what I wanted to say...

mamba80

DavidJB wrote:

mamba80 wrote:

if you own Fulcrum or Shimano then you may as well put the wheel in a skip.

From this statement you clearly have absolutely no idea what you're going on about. Fulcrum wheels are bomb proof. I'd also ignore all the factory wheel naysayers they have their own agendas.

ah yes the selective out of context quote!

What i said, IF you can read :?: :idea: , was that if you damage a Shimano or Fulcrum wheel, then in my exp of owning c35tu, F5's and F0's then a repair is almost certainly not economically viable - hence the skip quote or would you put them on a mantle peice?
eg ever tried getting a Fulcrum 0 or 1 rim? and if you can the rebuild will be pretty much the cost of a single whl or how about £700 for ONE c35 rim only? oh but they ve not got any or will they ever get any either! and that doesnt include another 80 for the spokes or rebuild.

I ve got lots of factory wheels and so long as you dont use them much in the rain or crash damage them, then they are usually fine.
In fact one the largest bike shops down here wont supply anything other than Mavic due to these reasons, his quote "its well known in the trade that shimano drop any sort of support for their whls once they introduce a new model range"

ugo.santalucia

TKF wrote:

matt-h wrote:

TKF wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Forget about tensile strength, that is not relevant

Incredible.

I'm going to try and stay within the rules you cling on to so dearly but you don't half speak a lot of rubbish for somebody who sells themselves as a wheel expert.

I'd wager Mavic knows a little bit more than you about making a wheel.

Just because they know more about selling a wheel does not mean they know more about making them!
Does a mechanic not know when Ford or BMW have made something to a price! It exactly the same thing!
I would wager that Ugo probably knows a hell of a lot more about wheel building than you.
Makes me laugh that you all get so precious over brands! You think they have any loyalty to you?

Matt

I have no dog in this fight as i have no brand loyalty. But when I see the self appointed forum "wheel expert" stating that tensile strength isn't relevant to spokes I'm going to call BS.

Read, we were talking fatigue, read... we all gave for granted that the tensile strength of Zicral spokes is good enough to take 100-150 KgF load, as required... we were one step ahead and already talking about the bigger issue, fatigue, that is.
Don't start with the "self appointed" music, because it's only going in one direction...

ugo.santalucia

robbo2011 wrote:

Am I allowed to link to another forum on here? probably not so I suspect this post will be deleted.

But here is an interesting discussion about R-SYS wheels with contributions from Mavic themselves.

http://weightweenies.starbike.com/forum ... 1&start=60

Thanks for that, interesting read. I disagree with a few point Zack @ Mavic makes, in particular

1) He says Zicral is less stretchy than stainless steel... given stainless steel has 2 to 3 times the Young modulus of the alloy 7075 (with the best thermal treatment available) also called Zicral, I think this is wrong.

2) He mentiones that carbon spokes are less susceptible to fatigue as they are not under great tension... I would argue that pretty much all spoke failures are due to the spokes being under too little rather than too much tensile load... so spokes being in tension is not the cause of spoke failure as his statement seems to suggest.

He also says that the rate of failure of the R SYS is actually lower than other wheels, according to the number of returns in the Mavic centres. We have to believe these figures, as we don't have better ones, but it clashes with the number of reported problems for these wheels.
Interesting read about the exalith rims, apparently the treatment is very expensive, hence it is not used in their most popular rims, as it would price them out of the market... I am not sure there, I have a few people who would pay big money for an Exalith Open PRO, I think they are missing a trick there

But very interesting read... and very civilized forum...

smidsy

Damn, I go away for a week and Mavic Gate happens. :-)

FWIW I also think the Maivic SLR/RSYS derivatives are pure overkill. They remind me of a concept car from Jaguar - great in theory but if you actually build it the reality is far less than satisfactory.

giant_man

lol mavicgate is what it is ...

majormantra

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Interesting read about the exalith rims, apparently the treatment is very expensive, hence it is not used in their most popular rims, as it would price them out of the market... I am not sure there, I have a few people who would pay big money for an Exalith Open PRO, I think they are missing a trick there

Yeah, but they'll never do it because they can make so much more money selling wheelsets.

In the event that they did do it, what would people be willing to pay, I wonder? Personally I'd pay £100 for an Exalith rim, but not more I think. Considering they charge £1600 for the R-Sys SLR that certainly won't ever happen.

ugo.santalucia

MajorMantra wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Interesting read about the exalith rims, apparently the treatment is very expensive, hence it is not used in their most popular rims, as it would price them out of the market... I am not sure there, I have a few people who would pay big money for an Exalith Open PRO, I think they are missing a trick there

Yeah, but they'll never do it because they can make so much more money selling wheelsets.

In the event that they did do it, what would people be willing to pay, I wonder? Personally I'd pay £100 for an Exalith rim, but not more I think. Considering they charge £1600 for the R-Sys SLR that certainly won't ever happen.

Yeah, I had that figure in mind too

Dmak

Slightly off topic but I'm also 88kg (somewhat blubbery I might add) and I'm thinking about buying some Ultegra 6700 wheels. My feeling is I might be on the heavy side for these but if anyone has any input on this, I'll be grateful.

dodgy

Wading in.

I have never bought a wheel off Ugo, I prefer factory wheels, though I have built a wheel for my own use in the past and appreciate the benefits of doing so.

However, I think Ugo's presence on this forum is a great asset, he's clearly knowledgeable and has frequently handed out excellent advice in the past. I consider his tendency to offer insights on what he's seeing coming into his workshop as great information on current trends (good and bad).

However, this is the Internet, and it seems everyone has an opinion, even me.

Anyway, I've decided to block anyone that I find annoying, and I don't need to tell anyone who that happens to be.

TOM14S

I've had zero issues with Mavic Zirical spokes. I do have the SLS rather than the SLR's at the moment.
They seem a very popular wheel with the people I know and nobody knows of anyone who's had an issue with spokes breaking. I've heard the spokes on Mavic wheels pinging before which I've always been able to sort out for people.
Looking at a cycling Mag this evening the Mavic SLS wheels also seem a popular wheel on a lot of bikes in that. So they can't be that bad.
I've discussed the technicals with Ugo before and he does seem to have something against them, legitimate in his eyes and experience but not from my experience or engineering technical knowledge.
To be honest - Steel spokes break, Zirical spokes break I don't see a difference.

robbo2011

How do you stop them pinging?

Dmak

robbo2011 wrote:

How do you stop them pinging?

It probably helps if you also replace the spokes adjacent to the broken ones. These tend to suffer quite a bit when their friend is missing and can't share the load.

TOM14S

robbo2011 wrote:

How do you stop them pinging?

Well, one person I know took their wheels to the LBS and they were charged £12 just for the LBS to put some oil where the spokes go into the hub which stopped them pinging for a while. :roll: I've seen applying oil mentioned on the internet too. Personally that's not fixing the issue just hiding it.
I think it happens on wheels that aren't properly stress relieved from the factory. The spoke tension does seem to drop off over the first 300 ish miles.
Ping the spokes and if there are some which audibly sound under less tension see if the rim is out of true and can add some additional tension. This has worked on wheels that just ping at one point during each rotation. If the wheel is true then I just add quarter of a turn extra tension to each of the spokes then back it off probably 1/16th of a turn. Solves the pinging every time.

ugo.santalucia

TOM14S wrote:

I think it happens on wheels that aren't properly stress relieved from the factory.

For 1 grand is it too much to ask the factory to stress relieve them? :shock:
THat type of pinging should disappear within the first few revolutions of the wheel under load... must be something else

TOM14S

I agree... I started to write in my last post that, I realise wheels that wheels that have not been properly stress relieved usually make a few noises and sort them selves out in the first ride etc. etc. etc. but I didn't think it would get mentioned
but I did compare the tension between new wheels and wheels that were pinging and the spokes had definately lost some tension. Maybe they're exceeding yield point, aye

Tom Butcher

TOM14S wrote:

I've had zero issues with Mavic Zirical spokes

Am I right in thinking Ksyrium SSC and SLs use Zircal spokes ? I've always been of the impression these wheels were bombproof if nothing else. I don't know about their use in other wheels but if these are the same spokes or same material it's certainly possible to build very robust wheels with them.

robbo2011

Tom, you are correct.

robbo2011

TOM14S wrote:

robbo2011 wrote:

How do you stop them pinging?

Well, one person I know took their wheels to the LBS and they were charged £12 just for the LBS to put some oil where the spokes go into the hub which stopped them pinging for a while. :roll: I've seen applying oil mentioned on the internet too. Personally that's not fixing the issue just hiding it.
I think it happens on wheels that aren't properly stress relieved from the factory. The spoke tension does seem to drop off over the first 300 ish miles.
Ping the spokes and if there are some which audibly sound under less tension see if the rim is out of true and can add some additional tension. This has worked on wheels that just ping at one point during each rotation. If the wheel is true then I just add quarter of a turn extra tension to each of the spokes then back it off probably 1/16th of a turn. Solves the pinging every time.

Thanks for the info.

Mike Cotty

seanwilliams158 wrote:

During this year's Marmotte my new Mavic SLR rear wheel had two spoke failures. Both on the block side, metal spokes just breaking. ( the left hand spokes are made of carbon ) I am 88kgs and it happened both times whilst climbing. I managed to limp to the Mavic support vehicles and they fixed the spokes, but the second time i had to decend Galibier all the way to Bourg D'oisans with no back brake, and severe buckle.... can anyone shed any light on this ??

Hi Sean,

Really sorry to hear that you had an issue with your rear SLR. As I'm sure you can appreciate Mavic have sold hundreds of thousands of wheels throughout the world over the years using Zicral spokes with only a very small number in comparison to units sold ever encountering an issue. Naturally if there was an inherent issue here the material and design would've been changed long ago to address this. It's not uncommon to hear directly from consumers (and on the forums) how "bombproof" the Ksyrium is. That said, if you do have an issue then the best course of action is to contact your local dealer (http://www.mavic.com/en/shopfinder) who will be able to rectify this through the Mavic Service Centre, getting you back on the road and enjoying summer (oh god, why did I type that......sorry people I've jinxed us all now!) as quickly as possible.

Once again apologies that you've experienced this.

Ride safe,

Mike Cotty
Mavic Community Manager