Trek Bicycles is recalling nearly 1 million bikes for a safety issue that resulted in one rider becoming paralyzed.
The recall involves bikes with a "quick release" lever on the front wheel that can interfere with the disk brakes, causing the wheel to stop turning or separate from the bike frame, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The recall covers 900,000 Trek bikes in the United States and 98,000 in Canada.

In the interest of fairness an perspective this sounds much worse than it is.

First of all, the problem only occurs if the bike is ridden with the QR in the open position, and any bike with the QR closed properly has no problem.

Secondly, while they are recalling "bikes" the reality is that they're only recalling the QR skewers. Those who are concerned can exchange the skewers or protect themselves by properly closing the QR (duh!!!), and/or reversing the skewer so the lever is on the "no brake" side.

I've read the recall and it's about as dumb as "if you drive your car with loose lug nuts the wheels will fall off."

People should be shown how to properly use a QR skewer when buying a new bike. Frankly this recall should not even exist.

I won't be surprised if this leads to an expansion of lawyer lips to protect against the QR handle getting jammed in the wheel. Maybe they'll be "Lawyer Duck Lips"

Have to take a Skewer operators driving exam ..

Maybe the thru axles at the low end will help

then people will lose the axle in the car or along the road where they load the Bike..

So, I don't need to run out and get a big bunch of Life Insurance? (Glad I don't ride Treks. )

Seems pretty sloppy of Trek, to spec a QR with such an unnecessary amount of lever travel.

Why?

Are they expected to foresee that someone would ride with the QR open and instead if the wheel falling off as one might expect, there'd be this freak accident?

I don't know. Freak accident isn't a term that I'd use.

The problem of bikes with front discs shedding their front wheels is hardly new. I was aware of it over a decade ago. I have personally test ridden a bike with a QR skewer that I myself installed which shed the front wheel with only moderate frong disc use. In that particular case I resolved the issue by using a Shimano QR with the enclosed style mechanism. If I were designing the bike, I think that I'd put the brake caliper on the front of the fork blade so the brake force would push the axle into the dropout.

Failing to properly close a quick release is certainly foreseeable. It is not an uncommon thing to happen. The user is expected to loosen and tighten that quick release as part of the normal operation of the bike, when fixing flats, using bike racks, etc so there are many opportunities to have a problem.

In the event that happens, the "lawyer lips" provide some protection against the failure mode of the axle falling out of the dropout.

But having a quick release that opens so far creates a different failure mode, of the lever getting trapped in the disc, and there is no mechanism to protect against that.

There is no reason to have so much lever travel, it doesn't have any benefit. So additional risk, a new failure mode, has been created, for no additional benefit. If the engineers didn't see this failure mode, that is sloppy. If they recognized it but didn't specify lever travel limits, that is sloppy. If they specified it, but whoever procured the quick release didn't follow the spec, that is sloppy.

Perhaps you don't understand the recall. It's not about ejecting a wheel via braking. I've argued from almost the beginning of the disc era that mounting the brake behind the blade made less than zero sense (being as nice as I can here). Most wheel ejection poblems wouldn't exist if the caliper were forward of the blade so the reaction force on the axle was up instead of down.

But this isn't about that. This is about somehow riding with the QR open (or "tightened" by screwing like a wing nut) and somehow not ejecting the wheel. Instead the open lever manages to get trapped under the caliper or in the rotor. As you point out, it's easy enough to eject a wheel if the QR isn't tight, so I figure that the requirement that one ride with an open QR, and not drop the wheel qualifies it as "freak".

From what I read elsewhere, there is nothing new about the QR levers in question in that they are the older style enclosed mechanism devices that are touted to be better at securing the wheel than the newer exposed cam style.
Why have we not heard of this problem if these skewers have been used with front discs for such a long long time?

Spotting this possibility in hindsight is easy. Anticipating the combination of circumstances that would lead to it is much harder. Part of the issue is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and it's possible that the engineer who worked on the initial design, and tests was wojing with other skewers and didn't see an issue. Later someone making or spec'ing skewers wasn't thinking disc, and wasn't worried about lever throw, since skewers are supposed to be closed.

Then somewhere along the line, someone at Trek opts to change hub or QR skewer vendors, and this happens.

This kind of thing happens all the time, in all industries, and isn't the result of a single act of stupidity or carelessness, but is the result of a chain or combination of circumstances, which would only matter in combination.

As I said earlier, I have no love of Trek, but I have no problem understanding how stuff like this happens, and find it much more forgivable than mounting disc calipers behind the fork, which has been SOP (with little protest) for decades.

But that isn't the problem that led to this recall. The recall is because the QR lever can extend inward to a point where it can catch in the brake disk and lock up the wheel. This is only an issue if you have the lever on the same side of the hub as the disk. If you install the QR so the lever is on the opposite side from the disk (as illustrated by JanMM above), the problem can't happen.

"Foreseeable misuse" Here's a good question for all you shop mechanics: "What percentage of quick releases do you estimate are improperly used?" My personal guess is at LEAST 25%. That's a lot of foreseeable misuse. Once the wheel is out of the dropout, it's anybody's guess how it got there.

I wonder why bike companies started mounting brake calipers behind the fork, instead of in front? That also seems sloppy. As in, the engineers designing the bikes should have realized the problems. Do you think they recognized the reaction forces would try to eject the axle from the dropout, but they chose to do it anyway for aerodynamic, cable routing, or other reasons? Or do you think they didn't recognize the problem?

Perhaps the problem is that bike companies don't actually design bikes, they design frames that components are hung on. And component companies don't design bikes either, they design components that bike companies hang on their frames. Maybe the mis-location of front calipers fell in the crack between frame and component.

If I ever get a disc brake road bike, I think I will choose one with through axles.

I wonder how quickly a pro team mechanic can change a wheel with disc brakes and through axles? There is some talk that the pro teams will simply change bikes instead of changing wheels. But with nine riders on a team, and a pro team car's roof rack only carrying about 7 or 8 bikes, and riders being of all different sizes and fits, that might not wok so well.

I've been wrong before, but I doubt we'll encounter that problem very soon. Bike racers are more interested in going fast. The only thing brakes do is slow you down. We'll see.

Sounds like the greatest marketing plan ever: Get 1 million previous customers to come into all the new Trek stores for a $2 skewer, and they can look at all the new bikes and fancy accessories hanging on the walls when they bring their bikes in.

Cynics aside, Trek is not only doing the 'right thing' -- it is the only thing they can do, both morally and with an eye to civil law.


Trek has a customer living the rest of his life either on a bed or in a special chair made for quadriplegics because the wheel of his Trek bicycle stopped turning. He can't do anything for himself and needs constant, 24-hour care and always will. He didn't want what happened; Trek didn't want what happened but -- it did happen.

"Murphy's Law" is right: If anything can happen, it will happen. And, once a company, engineer or mechanic learns that something really bad can happen and that it could be avoided by some sort of change, there is an obligation to make that change.

Trek's answer is such a change. Remington had a trigger that could fire a r*fle without being touched, they knew it and didn't fix the problem -- people died that didn't have to. Shame, shame, shame on Remington. Good for Trek.

I'd just get rid of the QRs; only racers need them, none of the rest of us do. I use through bolts from Nashbar and the necessary wrench is in the tool kit attached to each bike I ride.

Joe

Now levers in question could only fold open into spokes. I have a recalled bike, and two other (non-road) bikes with QR levers that swing open beyond 180 degrees: they're all going to go. My road bikes have QR levers that stop well short of 180.

It's up to you, but what difference would it make? I gather hat you never ride with the QRs in the open position, and the cams are made such that QRs that are fully closed do not open by themselves, not is that the issue with the "problem" levers.

I have no problem with the recall, it's something that Trek and all OEMs that use these skewers need to do. But understand that it's not about any risk with a properly used skewer, it's about mitigating the risks of misuse. Those who properly use QRs have no reason to be concerned.

Not a racer, but I do like/need QR fronts because I will regularly toss a bike into my car trunk. The car has folding rear seat backs and all I have to do is (quickly) pop off the front wheels and slip the bikes in and out.

They need to put one of those "pie tins" .. or what do you call them.."dork disc".. on the front so the QR skewer doesn't go into the rotor. That would look great and solve the problem...

QR is incredibly useful for many of us, non-racers included. Every time a wheel is changed, a flat is fixed, or a bike is loaded into a car or on a roof rack.

I go so far that I refuse buying "track" hubs for my fixed gear bikes because I can't find any that are quick release. I don't want to carry an extra unnecessary wrench with me.

But if you need it to remove the wheel, it's hardly an "unnecessary" wrench, is it?