Longer skewers for Co Mo carbon fork?
 

Greetings, I'm Brad, new to this forum, but no stranger to forums or cycling.

We recently upgraded from our old trusty '98 Santana to a '15 Co Motion Carrera which comes with a carbon fork. We rode the stock Rolf wheels for a couple of weeks, then exchanged for Spinnergy 29'rs over concerns that our hefty weight class would not be kind to the Rolfs. (After one ride I really like the Spinnergys - though it could have been that it was the first ride of the year where it was sunny, no wind, and a jacket, tights, and full finger gloves were not required).

Anyway, on both front wheels, the stock skewer is just barely long enough to allow installation and removal of the wheel without the screw cap end of the QR coming off. The drop outs on the Co Mo fork are pretty hefty. When removing the wheel, the screw cap almost always ends up coming all the way off.

I am not surprised that the aftermarket Spinnergy's may have this issue, but I would have expected the stock Rolf wheels would have come with longer skewers from Co Mo. I don't want to file the lawyer tabs down as they are not all that tall.

Anyone else experience this? Anyone know of longer skewers?

Thanks in advance

My friends have a '14 Co-Mo and described exactly your problem. The retailer had to order, from Co-Mo I believe, a longer one.
It sounds like they come in different sizes.

How can an eight or nine thousand dollar bike leave the factory with the wrong sized skewer? We had similar problems with both of our new co-motions (year 2000 crank fell off on first ride, and year 2007 IRD Cassette didn't work right with Shimano shifters). They were both great riding bikes, but we had to do a lot of tinkering to get them running right. I think co-motions are very good value, but these little details caused us to go with different builders for our current tandems.

Assembly issues?
Did you buy the Co-Mo at a bike shop or direct from factory?
Put 56,000 miles on our custom Co-Mo we ordered in 1993.
Pedal on TWOgether!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

Thanks for the replies folks. Tonight I measured the fork drop out width at it's widest point (lawyer tab to lawyer tab) which was 124mm. I then measured the quick release with the end cap "just engaged" onto the threaded end of the skewer to be 125mm. This give me about 1 turn of margin.

What I need is either a skewer with a longer rod, or an end cap that has a shallower recessed area for the spring.

If Mel at Tandems East can't help me, I'll reach out to Co-Mo and to Spinnergy.

IIRC, Spinergy doesn't make skewers. As for Co-Motion, they shipped our '04 Speedster with Salsa sets. I use the same skewer set for both the original Velocity Dyads and the Spinergy T2 rims. But both sets of rims are 700s. (I really should invest in another set.) Oddly enough, Salsa doesn't mention tandem skewers on their site. (Or not that I found, anyway.)

The Spinnergy's 29rs came with skewers with the Spinnergy brand on them. They are well made but the front was too short to go with the fork.

Mel at Tandems East sent me a different skewer which is much better.

How are skewers normally measured?

While those may appear to be well made, it is best to steer clear of QR skewers with plastic cams, especially if used in conjunction with disc brakes and the clamping force needed to sufficiently secure the disc hub.