boro

I just bought a Wald 157 (probably for too much money... that's another story) to use on an old beater as a grocery bike. Reading the PDF on Wald's website, it carries a warning at the bottom that said giant delivery basket should only be used with solid axles, and not hollow QR type. The beater bike in question definitely has solid axles, but my other bike does not.

If I want to swap the basket over to my other bike at any point, will I need to get a solid axle for the front hub? I don't plan on loading the thing with 100lbs worth of stuff anyway, but I wanted to make sure.

garage sale GT

Check how it attaches. It may be a matter of needing to bolt the support strut to a solid axle.

Solid axles aren't always stronger because sometimes they are made of cheaper stuff.

boro

The ends of the legs have 3 holes in a stamped flat section that slips over the axle. I'm just wondering if the warning is lawyer-speak or if there is a real danger of me loading too much into the basket and having the end of those legs turn into knife edges that will cut through the hollow axle on my cheap shimano QR hub and cause me much pain and suffering.

I'm cautious like that.

Wanderer

You need the length of a solid axle to make it work correctly.

Bezalel

You can probably make it work with braze-ons if you have them on your fork. I would definately not put a QR skewer through the basket brace.

dabac

If you have enough clamping force to have the front wheel properly secured to begin with, it shouldn't be possible for the basket legs to load the Q/R in a shear mode anyway.
Sheldon Brown has even written something about axles not protruding outside the locknuts, basically saying aligning the wheel is a pain, but no ride issues.
My concern would be with the length of the skewer primarily, and thing slipping secondarily. The basket legs will add a few mm on either side, so you'll want to make sure that you still got enough thread engagement at the acorn nut. Also, Q/R levers often have a knurled face against the dropout, while I'm guessing that the basket legs are basically smooth.
Shouldn't be an issue for the wheel, as if there is slipping the axle will just eventually end up putting some load against the top end of the dropout. It is possible I suppose, that this would introduce a bending moment on to the skewer. But it'd surprise me immensely if it turned out to be real broblem IRL.

boro

Thanks for your replies. Wanderer was indeed correct, so I returned the basket and am now looking for something to utilize my braze-ons.