So I was cleaning and lubing the chain last night. And I noticed the rear Wheel (Mavic Ksyrium equipe) had about every other spoke going into the hoop small stress cracks.....

Has anyone else had experience with Mavic taking care of business? I looked on their web site saw no info on warranty stuff for 2009 rims? I have almost had these brand new since Nov 2011...about 8k miles...they have been rock solid...until now.

Was just wondering what others experiences are...and what I can expect? I had a friend who said his LBS took the lead on the warranty with Mavic...so I am hoping the same happens for me. I am just glad that I still have the rear stock wheel...to run in the mean time.

Stress cracking of rims at the spoke holes is becoming more common on all wheels. This wasn't an issue years ago because rims were made of more ductile alloys, and builders used thinner spokes and lower tension.

Over the last few decades many have moved to thicker spokes and typical tensions have risen tremendously from what was considered proper in the past. Part of that is folks simply getting carried away, but also consider that modern wheels have more dish (asymmetry), causing greater tension differences between the right and left side (as yours does). Also, wheels with fewer spokes require more tension to compensate.

Years ago, the typical mode of failure in race wheels, was spoke breakage, these days rim failure is also common.

I don't know how many miles those wheels have, nor how heavy you are, but I'm not surprised about the cracks, and suggest you continue riding until they die, then replace or rebuild depending on the relative cost. If you replace, and want longer life expectancy, consider a wheel with more spokes.

So more spokes means less tension on each spoke and less likely to crack the rim? Is that what you're saying FB?

Stress cracks means to me end of service life. I wonder what the service life of those rims actually is?

Yes, and no. More spokes means that a wheel with equal load capacity can be built with more spokes at lower tension, and possibly a lighter rim. But there's a world of difference between what's possible, and what people do in real life.

While fewer spokes requires higher tension (and rims that can take it) I've known builders to adopt the philosophy that if more tension is good, the most tension is best. That most definitely is not true.

I've had people who've had wheel problems referred to me and after delivering a pair of wheels, had them turn up their noses because they "don't have enough tension". My standard approach is to ask f the wheels they had before had more tension, which they confirmed, and then asked why they expected me to solve the problem doing exactly what the others did.

In one case, I ended up dismantling the wheels, and returning the hubs and payment rather than try to please the buyer.

It's impossible to predict service life because there are too many variables. A heavier rider, with a more aggressive riding style, on lousier roads, will do worse than a light rider that rides smoothly on good roads.

But buyers should be aware that if they are buying "race" or high end sport wheels, they're trading away service life for performance. There's no magic here, and it's not a quality or money issue, it's a matter of fitness for purpose.

Mavic Ksyrium Equipe comes with a recommended spoke tension of 140-160 kilo. Quite a lot by almost any standard.
I didn't have any problems getting a replacement rim, but had I had to pay anyone for the replacement work I'd probably have opted for buying another wheel instead. And yes, it was a crack that prompted the replacement.
Mine was definitely not still under warranty. Whether the OP would measure up for that treatment I have no idea.

If stress cracking is the typical failure mode for these, it's sad that Mavic didn't beef up the bellies of these rims. A bit more thickness at the spoke area wouldn't have added much weight, and could have gone a long way to improving the service life. OTOH, it could be that the spoke service life isn't much longer, and they preferred rim failure to spoke failure.

Well, to be honest I don't know if it was a stress failure or a sudden overload of something caught in the spokes that caused the damage to the wheel that I've got. But later models came with machined troughs between the nipple seats, which may well be from trying to keep the weight constant while strengthening the most stressed parts.

How the overall life calculation was planned out from Mavic I have no idea, but judging by forum posts it seems like it can go either way.
There's a decent Ebay trade in single and small pack spokes - which wouldn't exist if rims consistently failed before spokes.
There's a decent trade in freehub bodies bearings, which, given the cost of replacement rims and a full set of spokes vs new wheel, wouldn't happen either if spoke/rim failure through fatigue was a common enough occurrence.
My theory - not that I have much invested in it - is that it seems like (some) Mavic wheels are marginal enough to be heavily influenced by rider and ride style. People who ride "light" - not necessarily short distances - can get good mileage out of them, while other riders seems to be able to thrash them in short order.
Add to that assumption that many of them get sold to "weekend warrior" types who maybe not manage much of a mileage and you'll have life predictions all over the place.

There's a difference between life expectancy and the pattern of failure modes. Good engineering designs in a preferred failure mode. For wheels it should be spokes rather than rims, since the former is more repairable.

OTOH if the intent isn't to be replacing spokes, or if the band of spoke failure is very narrow, then a near equal distribution of failure modes, can show that Mavic carefully dialed in the balance in component wear strength.

In any case, buyers have a very broad spectrum of wheels to choose from, and can seek out the best balance between weight, load strength, service life and cost for their needs and preferences. It's not reasonable to buy a light wheel intended for high end sport use, and expect it to last as long as a wheel intended for utility or touring.