Bianchi84

I worked in a Schwinn shop for about 15 years when I lived in NY. I remember this "solution". No generic after-market wheels came with this set-up, so when a customer trashed his front wheel, you had to switch over those shouldered lock-nuts and "springs". This way, the QR lever can again be mis-used as a wing-nut (despite instructing customer again on using a QR) and the wheel can stay rattling in the forks and rubbing on the brake-pads. As ridiculous as these "solutions" seem: this one, "lawyer-lips", washer-with-pin that fits into eyelet, etc, the scary part is that some people actually need this type of mechanical hand-holding to save them from themselves.
'

Salamandrine 

I was waiting for someone to mention those. Yeah, it was an expensive way to fix the alleged problem. The big positive with those is that the QR did not need to be readjusted every time it was used. In that way they were 10x more reasonable than lawyer lips.

IME working in shops lawyer lips caused more problems than they solved. They really confused customers, since the QR had to be readjusted every single time it was used, pretty much negating the purpose. This resulted in more QR installed incorrectly -- IOW just spun on like a butterfly nut.

I was pretty shocked and surprised a couple years back when my friggen Rivendell frame arrived with lawyer lips. I grabbed the file within 3 minutes of unwrapping the thing. Bye Bye lawyer lips... They used to only come on lower to mid level bikes. Yeah, it was the cheapest frame Riv sells, but still pretty much not a cheap bike.

Chombi1 

Yes, it was quite ridiculous when even Trek's top of the line race bike, the OCLV 5500, had lawyer lips on its fork ends.....
You would think that people that bought that race bike knew what they were doing when they took the front wheel, on and off.....but apparently, Trek's liability department did not think so?

cudak888 

I've got a fairly high-end (for what it is) Riese & Müller Birdy BD-1 here. They seem to have circumvented the problem by providing Huffy-style tabbed washer holes in the front fork ends.




Not a bad idea, really - owners can throw the clunky washers away quickly and not have to bother with frame protrusions.

-Kurt

gearbasher

Reminds me of a story. Riding with a good friend about 40 years ago, we come to a bridge and he gets a front flat right before the incline. He replaces the tube and off we go. I'm leading up the bridge and just as we crest, I hear him laughing. So, I ask: "What's so funny?" He just says: "Whatever you do don't hit your brakes." So, we coast down the bridge at about 20 MPH and coast to a stop once we hit the flats. I ask him: "What's up?" And he just points to his quick release. It was hanging there, loose. I'm glad he found it funny.

Bobjackson

Upon inspection of my 1984 Bob Jackson: full campy super record, discovered the same inscription, "locked and unlocked". I wonder if the other campy accessorized bicycles that I had where inscribed as stated.