I received a Ksyrium Pro Exalith SL from a customer for service.
I've corrected "Exalithd" in the title and body text to "Exalith."
Thank you for pointing that out in the comments.
Looking back at past posts, while "Exalith" is more common,
"Exalithd" appears fairly often too, so I'll fix those later.
Actually, I think I inspected another Ksyrium for this same customer quite recently.
I wonder if something happened.
Exalith rims don't typically show brake wear marks unless they've been heavily used,
but these front and rear wheels give the impression of being
"carefully maintained" rather than "barely used."
The centering was spot-on. There is a slight wobble though.
The hub bearing rotation felt rough, so I removed the hub axle to inspect,
and found that both sides needed replacement, though one was worse than the other.
The hub bearing preload was properly adjusted when I received it,
but Mavic's sealed cartridge bearings are extremely durable—
if they failed within two years,
the only explanation would be that the bearing preload was overtightened at some point.
The other possibility would be a high-pressure washer,
but since the rear hub bearing was fine,
I can rule that out.
I replaced the sealed cartridge bearings with new ones.
The wheel after lateral true work.
There was no centering offset to begin with,
but I took these photos in the final state without any further adjustments
just to document that it had no centering offset.
Now for the rear wheel.
This is the so-called "R-SYS bearing that goes by the name Ksyrium."
It's unusual to see the rim shifted toward the freewheel side.
The freewheel-side spoke tension is slightly low,
so I first tightened the freewheel side (which initially made the offset worse),
then tightened the non-freewheel side to center it.
I tightened the freewheel side and did a full lateral true.
I achieved centering by tightening the non-freewheel side.
Among all universal nipples and non-universal nipples
(like Racing Zero, Ksyrium, and Spinnergy Zero Light),
based on spoke thread pitch, spoke angle, and spoke path,
the R-SYS rear left spoke appears to have
the largest rim lateral movement per nipple revolution.
The difference between sides is also large—the freewheel-side one turn and the non-freewheel-side half turn are roughly equal,
or perhaps the non-freewheel-side is even larger.
The previous centering offset was fairly significant,
but after tightening the non-freewheel side about half a turn at a time, the offset reversed.
I went through this process, but didn't photograph it.
I've corrected "Exalithd" in the title and body text to "Exalith."
Thank you for pointing that out in the comments.
Looking back at past posts, while "Exalith" is more common,
"Exalithd" appears fairly often too, so I'll fix those later.
Actually, I think I inspected another Ksyrium for this same customer quite recently.
I wonder if something happened.
Exalith rims don't typically show brake wear marks unless they've been heavily used,
but these front and rear wheels give the impression of being
"carefully maintained" rather than "barely used."
The centering was spot-on. There is a slight wobble though.
The hub bearing rotation felt rough, so I removed the hub axle to inspect,
and found that both sides needed replacement, though one was worse than the other.
The hub bearing preload was properly adjusted when I received it,
but Mavic's sealed cartridge bearings are extremely durable—
if they failed within two years,
the only explanation would be that the bearing preload was overtightened at some point.
The other possibility would be a high-pressure washer,
but since the rear hub bearing was fine,
I can rule that out.
I replaced the sealed cartridge bearings with new ones.
The wheel after lateral true work.
There was no centering offset to begin with,
but I took these photos in the final state without any further adjustments
just to document that it had no centering offset.
Now for the rear wheel.
This is the so-called "R-SYS bearing that goes by the name Ksyrium."
It's unusual to see the rim shifted toward the freewheel side.
The freewheel-side spoke tension is slightly low,
so I first tightened the freewheel side (which initially made the offset worse),
then tightened the non-freewheel side to center it.
I tightened the freewheel side and did a full lateral true.
I achieved centering by tightening the non-freewheel side.
Among all universal nipples and non-universal nipples
(like Racing Zero, Ksyrium, and Spinnergy Zero Light),
based on spoke thread pitch, spoke angle, and spoke path,
the R-SYS rear left spoke appears to have
the largest rim lateral movement per nipple revolution.
The difference between sides is also large—the freewheel-side one turn and the non-freewheel-side half turn are roughly equal,
or perhaps the non-freewheel-side is even larger.
The previous centering offset was fairly significant,
but after tightening the non-freewheel side about half a turn at a time, the offset reversed.
I went through this process, but didn't photograph it.