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I've been riding a pair of wheels built around Mavic 719 rims for about 7 years, so they've done a lot of miles (although they've never needed truing and I'm still running the original set of hub bearings, so they've not been abused).
I've just noticed a rather alarming crack propagating for around one of the spoke holes on the rear wheel. The one in the image below is by far the worst; roughly 50% of the spoke holes have no damage, the remainder have hairline cracks of about 1/2 cm either side of the spoke hole (the front rim is unaffected).
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So I guess I should be looking at a new set of wheels fairly soon (I'm not sure that these could be safely ridden much longer).
Is this an acceptable wear and tear failure, considering the age of the rims or should I be looking at something different to replace them (recommendations please)?
For reference they run with discs but do have V-brake surfaces.
I certainty wouldn't ride those again! a You've had a good innings out of what is a light xc rims. Time to retire I think.
I made a typo - they're actually 719s
Some Mavic rims are prone to this (acceptable or not, way out of warranty). You can keep riding but keep an eye on them, they will pull through at some point.
I rode my 717s for years after they started to crack. Eventually the spoke does pull through but it's not catastrophic and as you're running discs you'll be able to ride home when they do go.
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I'm not an expert but things can escalate quite quickly. 😀
http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/ive-split-my-rim-around-the-middle-is-this-common
I wouldn't ride that to the shops personally.
My 719s went similiarly, lots of little stress marks and then cracks around the eyelets, they didn't take so long to do it though 🙁 I think probably something to do with how they fit the eyelets?
Mine split like that at two spoke holes. I rode them twice more whilst waiting for the new rims to arrive, I felt a bit twitchy though!!