I have tried the new ksryium SLR's with the Exalith process and love them. I do like the black look and found the braking great. I have soooooo many carbon wheels over the years, mostly tubulars. also have had a few sets of carbon clincher sets, but if you look at the rim weights the alloy rims are as light or lighter.

With the alloy, the braking is superior (especially in rain) and I am now tempted to but a set of these wheels. My only question is with all the coin that is layed down for the wheels how long will the braking surface stay that way. Being a surface treatment only, I would hate to find it sctatch through the exalith process as that's what your paying for.

So now with some wheels out with the riders has anyone scratched through the surface yet

2 months on my R-SYS SLRs now - not worn through at all. However, a light scratch has revealed the bare metal on my front wheel so my feeling is that surface treatment isn't particularly deep.


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Did the scratch come from the brake pad itself? It was said somewhere that the surface treatment is 10 microns deep, so it sounds fairly shallow. With a good chunck of coin at stake I would hate to pull the trigger on these only to find it no better than the CD process which scratched very easily.

there has been concern regarding its initial wear and squealing (based on other extensive reviews) but in the long run it seems to live up to what is expected of mavic. My riding partner got a set this week. Will get back to you with impressions and comparisons to my zipp 404 clinchers.

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Dogma 6650g

i've done about 1000km in the first month, no scratches so far

the pads wear very fast at the start, then this eases as the rims get coated in pad material

i'm still on the first set of pads, about 1mm left before they need changing, there was almost this much wear in the first 20km, so the wear rate does reduce fast

braking is very progressive, no snatching, seems better than plain alloy rims in this respect, for maximum braking maybe needs a bit more pressure on the levers

i did the toe-in as in mavic's instructions and there's no squealing/judder

there is a high frequency whine when braking as the pads scrape the ridges on the rims

i had one customer that had a bad shrieking squeal on her front brake with the ksyrium slr/rsys slr set. no toe-in, toe-out, flat, angled, cleaned, scuffed, anything would make it go away.
then i recalled the post on WW earlier about the pad material being the same as SwissStop ghpII, but with the older-style shallow grooves to help combat squeal. i decided to try the actual ghpII pads, with the very deep channels in them, and the noise was gone.
so far, that's been the only hiccup ive encountered on the exalith wheels.

The squealing only happens early on in their life - it subsides after 250km and is almost gone completely after 500km.

A bit of extra toe-in helped for me too.

Hi all - thanks for your reports on Exalith wheels. We appreciate the comments.

It's a completely new application of this ultra-hard surface treatment so the Mavic engineers had quite a bit of work to perfect the braking performance and still deliver the expected benefits. For example just the brake surface texture required many iterations and lots of testing to refine.

It's possible to damage the Exalith surface. It's super hard and 10 microns thick, but not impervious. For example, if you get a piece of sand or grit stuck in your brake pads, it could eventually wear a silver streak into your brake track. (Quartz is harder than Exalith). Or, if you need to true your wheels and you use a truing stand with metal arms, repeated contact of the metal (steel) arms on the brake track could cause Exalith to wear. (Steel is harder than Exalith).

For those with persistant brake squeal noise: one thing we've noticed is that a loose fit between brake pad and carrier can cause vibration and noise. I experienced it with DA7900 brakes. The pads fit loosely in the carriers, so I shimmed them with tape on the back of the pad. The tighter fit made the noise go away.

thanks - mavic zack

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USA Communications Guy
Mavic, Inc.
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I have my beady eye on a change of wheels so might be tempted to sell my R-SYS SLRs - if anyone is keen let me know.

Only covered about 750km!

had my first long really wet ride with exalith rims today, pleasantly surprised by the performance...

braking seemed pretty much identical to dry, after an hour or so they developed a little bit of judder in the last 1-2 metres before coming to a stop, maybe due to the accumulated pad residue being washed off?

the great thing was that they didn't have the delay before braking that my plain rims suffer from while the surface water clears, with exalith the braking was immediate

habit was still making me brake early in the wet, so i was slowing sooner than expected, although given the erratic behaviour of a few drivers today that was probably a good thing!

Same here. I have a set of 2010 Carbone SL now, I stopped by a LBS over the weekend and saw one of the Scott has a pair of this new black rim. I asked and it turned out it belongs to a Scott Sales Rep bringing it in to install a custom Di2 where they tried to hide the battery in the seat tube rather than mount it near the crank... well...anyway. These new Exalith black looks very nice, very sexy. I couldn't stop thinking about it and actually thinking about "laying down the coins" but have the same question that upside has, "will the surface scratch eventually ?" I used to have a FIR rim dated back 20+ years ago that weren't "machined". I hated the scratch rings around the rims. I kept digging and digging on the web, but no one have them long enough to provide answer (I guess). However, I did found this photo that gave me some hints already & made me kinda sad to find out 'cause I really like that look on an all black tire.

Actually the Exalith surface in that picture is fine so I’m not sure what your concern is? (are you getting the tyre sidewall confused, or seeing reflections / light catching on the wheels and thinking they’re rim damage?)

That said, a mate of mine has put some decent mileage on his rims now, and they’re starting to show wear. No idea what kind of distances he’s covered, but he’s only had the wheels since May.

Both sets of mine are fine, but my CC SLRs are brand new, and I’ve not been using my R-SYS SLRs so much lately as they’re on my other bike.

I've done about 1200 miles on mine so far, including plenty of hard braking on descents, and some wet weather riding

no sign of any wear, just a greenish tinge from ground up brake pad

fwiw i had a nasty moment coming around a corner and the wheels dropped into a surprise crack along the road, it cut the front tyre and the rim certainly hit the sides of the crack, scuffed the carbon a bit but no scratches at all on the exalith, there's a slight dent on the edge of the rim but the coating still looks perfect, no flaking/cracking

Zach

My LBS just told me you guys discontinued the cd ceramic rims, is this true? I have a set going strong but have been thinking about buying a back up set. If it's true are you guys going to release an exolith treated open pro/rim?

JR

I've got a set of R-sys SLRs and and a set of CCSLRs. Once you get past that initial break in they quite down a lot. Happy with mine.

Zach tell the frogs to sell an Exalith tubie rim.

Starnut

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