Originally Posted by coneill
So you don't think I'd have to worry about breaking an axle with it extended like that? I called around to 3 different LBSs this afternoon, and one thought I'd have a problem with it, but the other didn't. (It didn't come up at the first place).
If I did break an axle, is it the sort of thing that's going to be catastrophic, like breaking a fork, or minor, like breaking a chain?
The drive side bearing is almost all the way out to the locknut for the 135 mm OLD XT freehub and even with an additional 5 mm of overhang, that is a lot less than freewheel hubs used to have.
A broken axle usually isn't a catastrophic failure as the QR skewer will hold everything together for a while. A friend rode with a broken axle for several days until we noticed it. A nutted hub would be a different story.