Fixed gear with quick release
 

I bent my rear axle by putting my wheel into a frame with non-parallel dropouts. I have the tool, and I know how to fix my dropouts. A friend gave me a replacement axle, but it's a hollow one, intended for quick release. I know it's unusual to have this setup, but it should be safe enough, right? I'll be sure to secure the skewer when I put the wheel in.

That is somewhat debated.
Some will say it’s perfectly fine, assuming a high-quality, internal cam skewer.
Others will insist that their mighty thighs holds power enough to pull a wheel out of alignment unless secured with nuts, preferably the flanged and serrated kind.
Yet some insist that chain tensioners are the only way to pedal-power nirvana.

I'm a lightweight. I guess I'll be fine.

I used two QR fixies for a while. It was completely useless with an external cam skewer. It worked pretty reliably with an internal cam skewer. Occasionally, the wheel would slip on aggressive standing starts (i.e. from a traffic light, when trying to beat others off the line). Note that derailleur bikes with forward facing rear dropouts have the same feature/issue.

I'm a lightweight also. 155 lbs. I did it (QR) early on. Works. Marginal. I won't again. Use a QR with good sharp knurling on the nut surfaces and sturdy steel skewers, internal cam. (You knew all that already.) If it does pull loose, you trash a little chainstay paint, make the tire sidewall a little older and leave a skidmark on your tire. It all stays rideable and crashing isn't likely. (I know nothing first hand re: skid-stopping and these comments do not relate to it at all.)

Ben

I don't skid stop. That looks dumb to me, even though it requires strength and skill.

Of course, all the pro road racers had the same issue of wheels pulling out in races until vertical dropouts came to be in the 1970s. Read the chronicles of the Tour de France between 1930 and 1970 and you can see read about races being brought to a standstill by the mass wheel pullouts. ( :) Send my the links when you find them! While you are at it, send me links to photos of track racers of the 1930s with their tensioners.)

Question: did Nelson Vails use tensioners?

Ben

thought I saw a Dura Ace track hub axle, hollow but the hole was smaller than what a QR would fit thru...


Probably helped take a gram of weight 0ff, or so..

About 10 years ago, my favorite fix gear shop had a new tire that looked ti be a good winter (non-ice) tire. Sturdy. Good grip. I bought a pair and put them on my winter fix gear and liked them a lot. A few weeks later the shop owner told me he was no longer carrying them and had sent his un-sold tires back.

Why? Answer - the brakeless crowd was suffering muscle pull and other injuries trying to stop! So this tire, the only thing on their bike that could slow it, was too good! They needed slippery tires with poor stopping ability so they didn't hurt themselves. That stayed our quiet joke for years. Tires too good for their intended purpose. "For operator safety, we only install poor brakes."

Ben

For some reason, I assume there is a line from Slap Shot that applies to that story.

I worked as a bike mechanic a few summers ago, and some dimwit came in, not even with a fixed gear bike, and asked me to remove the front brake. I asked him why, and he said because it makes him look babyish. I told him he better finish school. I don't think I could make up a story like this.

Solid axles for fixed gear bikes only became a "standard" when tracks began insisting on them. Prior to that, even high-end companies like Campagnolo offered track hubs with quick releases:

http://www.os2.dhs.org/~john/1036-1.jpg

A QR FG wheel with, as you already know, with a quality steel internal cam QR skewer is a perfectly acceptable for road use.
Since they held the wheel firmly and securely in place on horizontal dropouts under the immense power of C&V pro road riders "back when" they will do just as well for us.
A re-check of track-end/dropout spacing and parallel alignment would not be a bad idea while doing the conversion.

-Bandera

[QUOTE=JohnDThompson;20193682]Solid axles for fixed gear bikes only became a "standard" when tracks began insisting on them. Prior to that, even high-end companies like Campagnolo offered track hubs with quick releases:

OK, so it is safe enough, at least for me, perhaps even for many racers. So why did tracks insist on solid axles?

This is an old Viscount I've converted, not a track bike. I use it for occasional short trips and errands, nothing serious.

The concern was that in close racing, like pursuit events, a wheel could snag the QR of the rider in front, flip it open and cause a crash. The curved QR levers in the pre-CSPC catalog picture above were intended to minimize this, but UCI felt this wasn't sufficient.

Aha, thanks! And now tradition carries on the practice, even with the risk gone.

One downside to a QR rear axle on a fixed/single-speed is it is a bit more difficult to get the wheel centered and chain tensioned properly. With a solid/nutted axle, I find it easier to snug up one side while adjusting the loose side, then go back and forth to get the wheel centered with the chain tensioned as I like it.....'hope that makes sense.

FWIW, I found the rear axle on my single-speed was bent last fall. I was yakking with the owner of my LBS about replacing the bent axle with a hollow axle I had on hand. He talked me out of this due to the centering / tensioning issue I've tried to outline above. In the end, I purchased and installed a higher quality solid axle.

Dean

As TR should know, from experience, where axles break is just inside of the cone..
Re axle spacing to center the hub for a single cog chainline will reduce the leverage exerted

by a longer spacer and dish offset, to get 5 or 6 speeds in that same space..

I'll second Dean51. Nuts make setting the chain slack properly child's play. QRs can be really frustrating, esp if there anre any defects on the flats of the dropout that want to position the axle. A few late night or just "bad day" flats and you may wish you spent the extra time or money to get a nutted axle.

(A neat little trick if your frame had fender eyes: make a chain peg using a FH screw threaded into the eye from the wheel side, locked in place with one nut. The screw can be quite close to the chain and cog since nothing is ever getting out of line there. This is a promise you can never make with a derailleur setup. If you carry a Pedros Trixie wrench and have that peg, you never have to touch the chain.)

Ben

One of the many advantages of converting a horizontal dropout road frame to FG use is that race frames were designed for fast fault-free wheel changes "back when". Install the rear wheel in the correct position once, set the dropout adjusters screws and every wheel change w/ that spec is centered, and in the case of a FG properly chain tensioned.

-Bandera

It was Tullio's invention, the quick release.. when did the patent lapse so others could produce their own?

If memory serves it was a 1933/34 patent, plenty of time for that to expire by the boom days when we saw all of the major mfgs making their own reliable internal cam QRs.

-Bandera