I've been tightening my rear skewer pretty hard on order to keep the rear wheel aligned when I pedal hard up hills (standing). Skewer seems to have gotten weaker lately.

Unfortunately it seems to have lost it's clamping power. When I try pushing on the lever to close the skewer now it seems to have lost it's ability to do so. The lever doesn't really move the nut that clamps to the dropout anymore.

I think that one of the springs might have gone bad, but now I can't remove the plastic nut on the other side of the skewer to check the springs. I have a pair of pliers attached to the "nut side" while I'm rotating the lever side, but the nut won't come off and all I hear is a grinding noise.

This ever happen to you guys?