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Unboxed and Weighed: 2011 Mavic Ksyrium SR Road Wheels

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2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

Mavic’s introduced a number of changes to their 2011 wheel line, including a new flagship to the venerable Ksyrium road wheel: The Ksyrium SR.

With the Ksyrium SLR essentially being a front wheel only (the rear of the SLR “wheelset” is the R-Sys SLR rear wheel, and it comes only as a “system” with Mavic’s tires) for 2011, the SR is now the top of the line Ksyrium wheelset. To claim the top of the range, the new SR swaps Zicral alloy non-drive side spokes for the carbon R-Sys ones, which drops about 40g from the rear wheel.

Check the actual weights and lots of detail photos after the break…

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

The front wheel weighs in at 650g.

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

Rear is 790g. Combined, that’s 1,440g.

What’s great about this is that combined they come in a bit under the claimed wheelset weight of 1,460g (645g F, 815g R claimed). The other bonus is they don’t need rim tape since the rim bed is solid, so there’s no weight gain there.

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight 2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

Skewers: 58g Rear, 54g Front.

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

The wheels come with an owner’s manual, spoke magnet and all the tools necessary for adjusting the bearings, tinkering with the hubs and truing the wheels. And stickers.

Before you even ask:

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight 2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

They include a magnet because their bladed spokes with thick round ends won’t generally accept the magnets that come with most cycling computers. It has two small tabs in the groove to position it properly on the rounded ends of the spokes, or you can break them off and place it on the blades.

If you’re running the included skewers and magnet, the wheelset will come in at 1,558g.

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight 2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

The rims are joined with their SUP process, which are welded after being joined, then milled to make them smooth. The FORE construction (see below) keeps the inside rim wall complete solid, which negates the need for rim tape. Because of this “closed system”, near the end of our test period with these, we’re going to try running them with some Road Tubeless tires just to see, but Mavic does not make any claims as to their compatibility (but we hear they’re working on something…). We’ll see. Hopefully we live to tell.

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

The brake track has their UB milling to improve grip and reduce shutter. The FORE construction essentially stamps tubes into the outer rim wall which are then threaded to accept the nipples. This keeps the rim one piece unlike some wheels that use boat-shaped inserts to thread the nipples into. Mavic claims this design makes the rim 4x more resistant to stress.

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight 2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight 2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels detail photos and weight

The Ksyrium SR’s retail for $1,250. If you’re willing to forgo the R-Sys spokes and carbon-shelled front hub, you can get the Ksyrium Elites for $675 (1,550g claimed). But you won’t get the white paint and single spoke, which brings some real life to an older bike:

2011 mavic ksyrium sr road wheels mounted on the original trek postal bike ridden by lance armstrong for his first tour de france when

Just one of the rigs we’re currently testing these wheels on. Between the new Shimano 105 group and these wheels, this bike (same frame/fork Lance Armstrong rode for his first Tour de France win) comes in at 16lbs 15oz with pedals. Proof that good wheels and a decent (not even top of the line!) can make an older bike competitive with the current crop.

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Andrew
13 years ago

I have mavic rims on my 15 years old MBK XT. Only ones have been centered 🙂

alloycowboy
alloycowboy
13 years ago

It’s going to be really interesting to see how Mavic adjusts their technology with comming of disc brakes to road bikes.

Condor
Condor
13 years ago

Waiting on Mavic to follow the lead of HED/ZIPP/Velocity and introduce a wider 23mm rim.

fleche1454
fleche1454
13 years ago

interesting fit and build on that last picture

@condor
me too, their rims are so narrow even a 21mm would be better than what they have now

@alloycowboy
mavic is not likely going to need to do all that much adjusting to their tech for normal road wheels like these but i doubt we will see anything light from them

greg
greg
13 years ago

Andrew- what?!

Tyler- what’s with the ancient petrified turd you’re riding? does your left shoulder hurt? cuz that brake hood is 1/4 MILE lower than the right.

alloycowboy
alloycowboy
13 years ago

@fleche
I was thinking Mavic would have to change there spoke patterns to be able to handle the strain of disc brake loads. Changing the spoke pattern will probably affect the type of spokes and how they interface with the hub and rims.

Zach Overholt
Admin
13 years ago

, hey now, I don’t even have a road bike currently (riding my cross bike with slicks). At least Tyler has something that was top of the line, at some point, lol. If Tyler is like me, he spends all his bike funds mostly on mountain bikes.

fleche1454
fleche1454
13 years ago

@ alloycowboy
won’t everyone have to do that though….?
i doubt we will see them do any thing ground breaking any time soon anyways, look at these wheels and tell me what is ground breaking about them. Its an R-sys rear and and a ksyrium sl front. the company is slow to to bring road stuff to market and holds onto it hard once they do.
If you want my opinion the companies that will actually make good disc brake wheels that are more than road spaced 29er wheels are Sram/Zipp and Shimano. Both have more at stake if or when it becomes popular in a consumer market and they also bring stuff to market faster and in non limited quantities.

also next person to whine about how no one makes hydro road levers need to quit bitching and hack their levers if they want it so badly.

Uri
Uri
13 years ago

@alloycowboy

As I recall, the Speedcity came out in 02 or 03, and that was a disc ready hub on a road wheel. Sure, not particularly light, but it was a factory disc road wheel from Mavic.

joseph grimes
joseph grimes
13 years ago

uri

for what its worth, the speedcity is a 700C/29er size wheel, designed for mountain bikes to be ridden on the road. knowing that a 700×23 tire/wheel will fit onto a 26″ mtb (a la cannondale badboy), they released those wheels to turn your mtb into a 700c bike. the only problem with your claim is the speedcity is a 135mm spaced rear wheel. as far as i’m aware, every ‘road’ bike in the industry still uses 130mm spacing, so your mavic speedcity wheels won’t fit. in a pinch, you could probably swap out a rear freehub and/or axle, THEN you’d have your disc road wheel from mavic. as a shop guy, i’m a mavic lover/hater as well, i just wish they’d make a modern mtb fh body with more than 3 pawls and 24 engagement points. just my 2 cents.

DtEW
12 years ago

@joseph grimes:

You missed the point of Uri’s post. You should read the posts (alloycowboy) he’s actually answering to. It was about spoke patterns.

Also, those of you who opine that disk brakes add a significant load unto a conventionally cross-laced wheel (i.e. non-radially-laced) are channeling theoreticals that have been proven to be mostly non-issues. Do remember that disk brakes came onto the MTB scene in the midst of its weight-weenie, NORBA-racing era. People then were opining the very same paranoia, including dire warnings of self-destructing flanges, spokes shearing at the elbows, imploding rims, etc. It turned out that just about any wheel that would sustain pedaling torque had no particular added problems sustaining disk braking torque. The reason was simple. There was only so much torque you can generate at the tires before they either broke traction and/or crashed the vehicle.

Sure, wheels could be so underbuilt that disk braking torque could flex (or break) the system. But then, these wheels would already be completely unacceptable as they would flex so much under just rider input.

So again, not a realistic issue that Mavic has to overcome.

O_o
O_o
12 years ago

What tires are you sporting?

dipper44
dipper44
12 years ago

Any updates on how the tubeless setup is going?

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