is it possible to install quick release on wheels that do not have it? if so how?

First, you should only put QR wheels in frames with suitable dropouts. They should at least be vertical and hopefully have little bump thingy's that won't let the wheell fall out if it gets a little loose. This is really important.

Then I suppose if you could find a QR axle with just about the same diameter as your solid axle, you could install it into your wheel. Someone with bike parts might have old wheels and stuff. Ideally if you can find a QR axle with exactly the same thread as the solid axle than it should be easy to just swap all the old parts and peices onto the new axle.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/axles.html

If you find an axle that is close to the same diameter, but threadded differently, you could possibly put something together in order to make it work. The axle cones would have to be acceptable for use with the wheel races and whatever bearings you would use. Also you have to use nuts and spacers and such to end up with the right amount of QR axle exposed on the ends so as to be strong. The wheel should end up centered in the frame of course.

You'll need a skewer and cone wrenches:

https://www.nashbar.com/bikes//Produc...0052_175325_-1___
https://www.performancebike.com/bikes...551_1030392_-1___


Also, you should also probably post things like this in the Mechanics forum.

Huh? Quick release works just fine in horizontal dropouts. And I don't think any of my frames--with vertical or horizontal dropouts--have any retainer lips (just the forks).

+2

Even if some frames do have the catches on the drop outs, you don't need them. Bikes used to not have them on the fork, but people don't know how to use them, so now they do. They make them not so quick releases

The only reason for lawyer lips was for litigious idiots who couldn't properly tighten a quick release.

OP what kind of wheels/axles do you have now?

I have a single speed/horizontal drops mtn bike and I want to put a quick release for my rear wheel.
My LBS suggests that I should keep the bolt/nut combo. For my ss road bikes a quick release works fine.
Is it not OK for a mtn bike-too much torque on mtn bikes?

There is some disagreement on this, but on paper it would seem that quick release is strong enough, if used properly. After all, early mountain bikes had horizontal dropouts and quick release mechanisms. The torque generated by granny gear far exceeds even the strongest rider's torque on a traditional fixed/singlepeed drivetrain(posited by the Sheldon). Those bikes didn't generally have problems with the wheel being pulled forward in the dropout, IIRC.

Not all QR skewers are created equally. As far as new QR's, only Shimano and Campy use the internal cam design. External cam QR's don't have nearly as much clamping power as internal cam QR's. Back when pretty much all road bikes used horizontal dropouts, old school internal cam QR's were used and they held fine. Nowadays with almost all road and mountain bikes using vertical dropouts, almost all QR's (except Shimano and Campy) use the lighter weight external cam design. That's fine until you try and use an external cam QR in a horizontal dropout, it will almost always move in the dropout because of pedaling torque. We see this commonly at our bike shop, and solve the problem with a simple switch to a Shimano skewer or some old school skewer we have laying around.

not all internal cam skewers are equal the cheap formula internal cam skewers suck. as stated above the shimano ones work great