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FEATURES: TRUE CONFESSIONS OF AN ALUMINUM WHEEL LOVER
Zap
March 29, 2011
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We have to admit, in this day & age of carbon everything, it’s not all that often that something made from
aluminum gets us all that excited. Like so many others, we too suffer
from acute carbon-geekitis. Sure, we know an aluminum Ritchey stem is
lighter than the carbon version, but the WCS carbon stem looks soo
sweet! True, we did take an authentic liking to the Cannondale CAAD-10;
good price, good ride and good value – what’s not to like? But actually
getting excited about and ogling something aluminum? When was the last time?
Actually, it was just a few days ago. That’s when the UPS guy dropped
off two big boxes with a return address somewhere in France. “A-ha!
They’re here!”
And so our new Mavic R-SYS SLR wheels had finally arrived. We
hadn’t seen the wheels since Mavic man Zack Vestal showed us some
pre-pro prototypes a few months ago. The “oohing” and “aahhing” when the
jet black-on-black wheels were pulled from their comfy wheel bags was
palpable. Yeah sure, carbon hoops are all the rage and Neil says he has
no problem with carbon braking surfaces, but with all of their throwing
caution to the wind attitude in life, what do the kids know?
Maybe it’s because I’m the old guy on staff. Maybe it’s because
my daughter said she’d bust me in the chops if I ever got hurt again
after she watched me get a dislocated hip on a dusty motocross track. It
might be because I’m such a big ring ripper that I have yet to meet my
match in stopping power with carbon rims. Actually, maybe it’s just because I really don’t
know how to ride a bike and getting one to stop is just something I
have yet to figure out! Whatever the reason, I love aluminum wheels. I
love how many of them look, I love the ride quality and I especially love – LOVE – the way they
offer consistent & reliable braking performance. Instead of dragging
my brakes for 50 yards with carbon rims, I dig being able to fly past all reasonable braking points, grabbing the
levers hard to late brake and still make the turn, still make the stop
sign, still avoid the car turning right in front of me.
And beyond performance, how about the look of these wheels? I'm not always a big fan of black, but these wheels look so svelte and tre-chic' it's not
even funny.
With that said, the new R-SYS SLR wheels are the cat’s meow due to their
new Exilith sidewall coating. By applying this new hard coating, the
rims walls were able to be made thinner and lighter. The machined
braking surface is actually made up of a ba-jillion little scallop
shapes which are necessary to work in conjunction with the R-SYS
specific brake pads and also to help shed water. Like many other Mavic wheels,
these hoops have the proprietary ISM machined rims, and the R2R spokes
on the rear drive-side. The carbon Tracomp carbon spokes are used up
front (16) and on the non-drive side in the rear (20).
These wheels too come from Mavic as a system using their own
tires. On the RBA scale, the wheels weighed in at 1481 grams w/o tires &
w/ skewers (640 f/841 r). Ready to roll with Mavic’s tires, the pair of
wheels weighed 2096 grams. Okay, that’s all I have to say about the wheels for now. We just got
them on a bike for our first ride this Thursday following the Stage One
time trial at the Redland’s Classic race - let the testing begin! They cost just under $2k and should be available at dealers now.
OKAY, SO WHAT ABOUT CARBON?
Oh yeah, I almost forgot…Mavic also just released this video of
current world champ Thor Hushovd doing some R&D work on the cobbles
with a new 40mm deep carbon rim that he might break out at the upcoming Paris-Roubaix. Mavic says they’re not even sure
whether these "M40" wheels will ever become production or not, but they are
happy to show some footage of the R&D effort that they put into
their wheel development – something they’ve been doing for over 100
years.
The wheels have already seen plenty of action this year and under Phillipe Gilbert they've even found their way to the top spot of the podium at Strade Bianche.
For more info: Mavic Wheels.
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