Preview: Mavic Crossmax SX 2012

After more than 2 years of use/abuse of my Sun Ringle Equalizer-29 rims, coupled with Hope Pro 2 hubs, I finally got some new wheels for my AM riding.

I decided to go for the Mavic Crossmax SX 2012, for several reasons; I have never been on straight-pull spokes before, and secondly I knew that Mavic has its AM line dialed when it comes to strengh.

Mavic has revised the Crossmax SX for 2012. Its gotten stronger by the use of a new rim extrusion, a new graphics package is in place as well. Other than that its known for its stiffness and strengh, albeit some hub issues, but ill get back to that in a moment.

The strongest and the best Mavic has to offer for AM riding.

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ITS-4 hub, loved and hated. Some people run these hubs without ever running into issues, other riders report of reliability issues. I hope that I fall into the first group of people.

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The Crossmax SX has a Maxtal rim, its 30% stronger than 6106 alloy, and tests has continuously shown that these rims has an immense strengh. The rims are even used for pro-level slopestyle, propably some of the most stressfull challenge you can pose a mtb rim.

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The spokes use a Zicral Alloy, its a very strong alloy of the 7075 series, with a strengh comparable to steel - just without the weight penalty. One interesting use for 7075 alloy is in the manufacture of M16 rifles for the military. Ok back on topic, so, im not a big fan of proprietary stuff, I actually often advocate against it, but the Zicral spokes didnt scare me away because of two things; they have a good rep for not breaking, and despite what some might say, replacement spokes are actually easy to get hold of, well for me anyway, as my LBS carries them.

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Front wheel, 826g.

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Rear Wheel, 937g
That makes for an actual total weight of: 1763g - pretty damn close to the claimed 1755g.

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So I allready had my first 11 hours of actual trail time on these hoops. My initial impressions are very positive. By switching to this wheelset I dropped a whopping 680 grams of the wheels (!). The wheels are stiff and responsive, In fact, im abit surprised as to how much more easy its actually become to roll my bike after the switch (well maybe all that talk about rotational weight was correct after all, heh)

The wheelset came standard with a 9x135 axle setup, so I had to convert it to a 12x135 to make it compatible with my bike. The problem was however that Mavic has done a really poor job of telling how to do that, I just knew it was possible. The included manual mentions nothing, and the online manual was very poor, so I had to google a bit, and after a little guessing and trial and error, I succeeded, its actually pretty simple, and I reckon I could do any conversion within 2-3 minutes.  A x12 convertion kit was included as well btw.

Will these rims, spokes and hubs take the beating of my countless sideways landings, and general riding, or will they fail big time with a bang coupled with a furious fireball.. Well time will tell, stick around as I do a complete review, right here, on All Mountain Next. (thanks to Drea for hooking me up with these wheels)

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