DracoStandard

Morning all
I am having issues with my front wheel.

Between the disc breaks and quick release, I cannot get everything lined up correctly.

When the wheel goes in the drop ins the disk is nicely lined up between the pads. Then I close the lever and it pushes the wheel towards the non lever side and disk rubs against the inside brake pad.
So I loosen the skewer slightly and try again, now the wheel is too loose and when I pull the brake the wheel twists in the frame. After much careful and slow fractional turning of the nuts, i have found that the moment it stops rubbing, it immediately starts falling out of the frame.
It was fine until I took it off to change the tyre, so I have obviously done something stupid, but I cannot work out what.
My first thought was adjusting the fixed end of the skewer, but that does not seem to be possible as a separate adjustment to the skewer as a whole.

delbiker1 

Are you sure you are operating the QR mechanism correctly? It sounds like you are tightening it wrong. Are you tightening it too much before trying to close the lever. It should take some force to fully close the lever, but not a struggle. When you say "the moment it stops rubbing" what stops rubbing? I know it looks QR's are easy to work, but you would not be any where near the first to be doing it wrong. There are videos available for this very subject.

andrewclaus

You may have knocked the brake caliper out of alignment when you removed the wheel. Follow the above directions on getting the wheel mounted correctly. Then if needed, find instructions on checking and adjusting the brake caliper. It's easily done with minimal tools, is a good skill to have, and adjusting brakes should be done regularly anyway.

Mr. 66

Have you checked to see if the fork tips are aligned? That could draw things funky if they are not when clamped.

Koyote

That is not the problem. OP clearly stated that everything worked fine until he removed the wheel.

DracoStandard

thanks for the input

"moment it stops rubbing" - i am referring to the brakes rubbing on the disk - ill take some photos and try and show what I mean, but loosening nut makes the wheel wobble when i apply the brake, tightening it makes the pads rub on the disk.

I was hoping to avoid taking the caliper off (well letting it loose) and reseating it as then i have even more parts to try and align.

IceTee2

I don't have hydraulics, only mechanicals. I loosen the caliper, install the wheel properly, apply the brake and strap the lever while I tighten the caliper bolts. Haven't had to do this very often but it works for me.

cxwrench

That's not the correct way of adjusting most cable actuated disc brakes. Unless you're using brake TRP Spyre where both pistons move you'd had pad rub on the stationary piston side.

Andrew R Stewart 

Sometimes the axle ends (end caps or lock nuts) and/or the QR skewer end caps will indent the face of the drop outs. Especially if the QR caps are steel and/or the drop outs are Al. When this happens the reinstalled wheel will tend to settle back into these indents. One way to work with this situation is to install the wheel and secure the QR properly THEN adjust the brake to work best with this wheel position. Future reinstalls will tend to mimic this position. I don't know if this is what's going on but it can be frustrating to try to only slightly reposition the wheel in this case. Andy

79pmooney

I don't quite get what you are doing with the QR lever and adjust but: be very certain the lever is tight and the hub is really secure! You need that security far more than the old days with rim brakes. Basic physics.

Look at your bike from the left side. The brake caliper is behind the front hub. The disk travels through it moving up. When the caliper grabs the disk, it is being lifted up. That caliper is solidly mounted to the fork. The fork gets lifted up (relative to the front wheel). So, on a hard stop, if the QR isn't tight enough, the fork is neatly lifted off the hub. You plus the bike are going forward while the front wheel is still stopping. Wheel gets struck by the down tube and your life goes to s*** really fast. (So does the wheel and probably your fork. You aren't riding home.)

By contrast - rim brakes and loose QR. Rim is going very close to horizontally forward at the caliper. Grabbing the rim wants to pull the brake off the bike and the wheel forward in the dropout. (Countered by your weight pushing the bike forward and the tire braking action pulling the wheel back.) All these forces are near horizontal which the dropout handles easily even if you pull the QR out. (Please don't. There can be other forces involved.)

So - look at that QR as being needed to do the work of a rock solid thru-axle. It can, but it should be as tight as we used to secure QRs in back when all rear dropouts were horizontal. Don't use the QR to adjust the disk location! Adjust the brake to work with a proper, tight! QR. Brake rub is by far the lesser of two evils.

Litespud

The skewer isn't the issue, and since it simply clamps on the outside faces of the dropouts, it doesn't affect disk alignment (or at least it can't be used to adjust disk alignment). In any case, QR security should be prioritized over a rubbing brake - this shouldn't be some sort of compromise between QR tightness and minimizing brake rub - you can live with a rubbing brake, but you can't without a securely attached front wheel. IME QRs sometimes just don't play nice with disks. My last MTB had QRs (Shimano XT) and cable-op disks (Avid BB7s) - as often as not, when I removed and reinstalled the front wheel, the caliper needed a tweak to recenter the disk. Fortunately, this was pretty straightforward with the BB7 calipers, which had independent adjusters on both sides - it was 10 seconds work to adjust the caliper. I don't now what your options are with hydraulic brakes. Is the rubbing consistently on one side? if so, can you adjust the caliper to allow for this?

70sSanO

Just as a note, the wheel is sitting on the ground, it doesn’t move when you tighten the QR. The fork blades are compressed against the hub lock nuts/caps.

My SWAG is the non-caliper blade moves slightly more so the rotor is no longer centered.

As everyone one has recommended, tighten the QR properly and then correctly adjust the caliper.

John

alexul

That is why bolt through axles are better for disc brakes. Once you take the wheel off it is impossible to put it back on a QR at the same tension like it was before. The QR compresses the fork blades and changes the caliper angle against the disk.

After putting back the wheel with a proper tight QR, I loose the caliper bolts, pull the brake lever and with the brake on tight back the bolts. When I release the lever the pads should be aligned with the disc.

KerryIrons

A properly built fork with a standard hub width will not experience any deformation of the fork when a QR is tightened. If the fork is too wide for the hub then yes, it will deform.