Can't put the front wheel back on
 

Hi everyone!

I'm having a bit of a problem and I'm hoping someone here can help me... The rear tire came apart on my bike (2003 Diamondback Outlook), so I decided to replace both tires. Everything was fine until I tried to put the front wheel back on. Here's what happens:

When I put the wheel on the fork and I try to tighten the adjusting nut on the quick release mechanism, at first it starts to tighten and then it just starts spinning without getting any tighter. At that point it's still not tight enough for the quick release lever to do its job. No matter what I do it just won't catch and it keeps spinning without tightening. The puzzling thing is that when the front wheel is off the fork, I can tighten everything until it's way tighter than the fork would allow it to be, so I don't know what causes it to spin way before it gets to that point when the wheel is on the fork. I can tighten it fine when it's off, but when I put the wheel on the fork the nut won't catch.

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening or what I could try to get it to tighten enough to fix the wheel in its place?

Hard to tell not being there, but if the threads are stripped the nut may appear to thread on when there's no pressure but fail to advance when you are mounting it. Switch nuts with the rear - substitution is always a helpful diagnostic tool.

I don't know what skewer you have, but if it has a "plastic" nut, the metal insert may be spinning free of its plastic housing.

Thanks for the replies! I think the nut is all metal and one piece. I'll have to take the skewer apart to check the thread on it and on the inside of the nut, too. When the wheel is on the fork it sure is acting like the thread is stripped, that's why it confused me that I was able to tighten the nut when it wasn't pressing up against the fork. I'll take it apart tomorrow and see if that's what happened.

Got it fixed. About 1/4" of the thread was stripped on the skewer, so I ended up buying a new one and the wheel went on without a problem. Thanks again for the help!

Thanks for getting back to the topic to post what you found. Some of these topics get me thinking but the op never shows up to say what the results were.

I appreciate your forum style :)