“Stealthy”
It’s an odd pick for what seems to be the word of the year
for the bicycle industry (my critics would point out that the “stealth” trend
has in fact been on the cards for the past few years, but bear with me).
Seemingly in a backlash against the lurid neons of the eighties, and the boring
blues and pastels of the turn of the millennium (which I’m going to mostly
blame on a certain Trek bicycle company and their associated athletes and
sponsors), bicycle fashion has been heading towards the black and highlighted,
when necessary, with slightly blacker blacks. Some would liken the aesthetic to
an F117. Others, to riding Darth Vader’s bicycle.
Whatever anyone’s personal opinion on the matter, our
bicycles are getting darker, so get with it or join the counterculture.
Jumping onto the bandwagon with both wheels is Mavic, who
has finally brought the stealth aesthetic to aluminium rims with their latest
R-SYS SLR clinchers. Ostensibly a revision of their “exalith” super-hard
braking surface treatment, these wheels couldn’t be any more bang-on-trend if
they launched their own video-sharing social networking fourth-generation app
on Google Glass. Billed as a lightweight but stiff wheelset for both going up
and coming down mountains, the SLRs have more techny acronyms than can slot
into a computer’s north bridge and sound, both in hyperbolic description and in
road noise, like something from another planet.
By milling the heck out of the rims and reinforcing the thin
braking surface with their pitch-dark anti-teflon, the French wheel geniuses
have made a catch-me-if-you-can set of all-day wheels that rub shoulders with
carbon wheels going uphill, and outbrake them going down.
Of all of Mavic’s wheels, the SLRs make most use of the
(in)famous Tracomp hollow carbon spokes, spec’ing them on both sides of the
front wheel and on the non-drive-side of the rear, complementing them with
two-cross bladed spokes on the drive side to take drivetrain torque. The result
is striking; on the front, at least.
For such a low spoke count, the front wheel is admirably
solid laterally, and, in conjunction with a braking surface which at least
equals (though I cannot say betters) the best performance of any alloy wheel,
encourages attacking descending. If your front end isn’t tracking where it
should be as you loop down mountain switchbacks, it certainly won’t be
stiffness that is lacking.
That stiffness can bite back as sharply as the brakes bite
deep, though. With little give in the wheel itself, you are entirely reliant on
the tyre to grip. Whilst the spec’ed Griplink clinchers do a fine job here,
their relatively narrow footprint made me wish for some floatier tyres to
really match the performance of the wheel. Pressure and suppleness are equally
vital to really get your money’s worth.
And then there are the brakes. Supplied with their own hard
pads, the rims are virtually workshop files looking to strip of speed, and like
industrial equipment, they do so loudly and roughly. I am assured that given
time, the pads/rims come to an accord when they meet, but until then expect
them to yell like there’s no tomorrow. Racing, I got a few rebukes for what was
heard as panic-braking, but in fact was nothing but a slight scrubbing of
speed.
Not that I would particularly want to panic-brake on these
wheels. Modulation on the grippy rims is nigh-on discrete, and with very little
mass out at the edge, lock-ups are a very real possibility, especially in wet
conditions.
Out back, things aren’t quite so startling. With the pads
making a pronounced “phvee” sound every time they contact the rim, you’re never
in any doubt about whether you’re touching or not, and, disappointingly, like a
beautiful senorita, the Mavics do sway.
I tend to set up my brakes pretty tightly, so the fact that
I had to completely release the rear brake in O’er the Crow should be taken in
context, but for a wheelset that sets its stall out to be a climber’s friend, this
was an unpleasant surprise.
Make no mistake, these feel like light wheels, and never
more so than when out of the saddle – spinning up hills whilst standing is a
lag-free delight as the wheels take no effort to spin-up, either through
inertia or torsion. It’s a shame, then, that every few strokes would be met by
that attention-grabbing “phvee.” I am by no means a heavy rider, at 70kg, and
have never had anything like this level of deflection before. Ok, so I haven’t
ridden a wheelset within 450g of these before, but at more than five times the
price of my normal race wheels, I was expecting better.
Finally, there’s the aerodynamics. I’ve heard strange things
either way about Tracomp spokes – about how their thicker girth means that the
air passing over the trailing edge of the wheel is already so disturbed that
there’s no net increase in drag, and how having less spokes is more important
than having lots of aero ones.
I’m not buying it.
Regardless of whether it’s down to the spokes or the rims
these do not feel aerodynamic in the slightest. And that’s fine. They’re not
meant to be. But bear that in mind if you want an all-purpose wheelset.
What’s more, the centre of drag on the front is in a
peculiar position, leaving the forks unstable when subject to gusts from the
side. It’s not powerful – there’s not enough area to feel like you’re sailing
like on aero rims – but it introduces a small-amplitude oscillation that you
have to damp out with your own controls. Like a fly-by-wire fighter, the bike
feels like it wants to show off its nimbleness to such an extent that you have
to reign it back to keep it in a straight line. It’s not much, and not all of
the time, but it’s fair to say that these aren’t great cruising wheels.
Make no mistake, these are “good” wheels by any measure. If
you want lightweight wheels that are going to last more than a thousand miles,
that are as comfortable going downhill as they are going uphill, that have
consistent braking surfaces and the go-anywhere convenience of a clincher, you
aren’t going to find many better than these. Switch from a £300 pair of wheels
to these, and your bike will suddenly gain that lift-with-your-little-finger
wow factor and you will be able to climb faster, and that’s a fact. However,
they are not perfect, and aren’t necessarily £1300 better than that £300 pair.
They aren’t aerodynamic, the brakes can be grabby and very noisy, the rear
wheel is nowhere near as stiff as it could be and the tyres are merely ok (on
the front, anyway. The rear seems to be ok, though I have lost traction a
couple of times, but couldn’t honestly say whether that was down to the tyre or
me not being used to such a lightweight wheel when standing uphill). Only you
can make the decision as to whether they’re worth what they cost to you.
That being said, if you’re desperate for a black, aluminium
braking track, the decision has been made for you.
Vive le mode.
