Henry III

I'm baffled on how to stop my rear wheel on my 93 753 Reynolds Paramount to keep shifting in the dropouts. No matter how hard I reef on the skewer. The first good push the wheel clocks to the left and jams against the chain stay. It has newer Williams wheels on it and short horizontal dropouts. I've never had an issue like this on any bike I've ever owned. Before these wheels I had some carbon Reynolds that never gave me any issues. I'm stumped????

gomango

Internal or external cam skewers?

YouthxCrew

Possibly the axle might be too long. If it's protruding beyond the dropout faces even by a millimeter or so, you'll get wheel slip.

southpawboston

It could be a couple of things-- has the newer wheel always had this problem? It could be the axle is slightly too long, causing the skewer to compress directly against the axle itself and not the dropouts. Another issue could be that the dropouts are not parallel. I had the same problem once, and the issue was that one dropout was not parallel with the other. It caused the tightened skewer to rotate in the dropout. A simple dropout alignment tool solved that problem.

jiangshi

If you had no problems before, it is most likely the skewers. Very doubtful new Williams wheels have too long an axle, unless a PO messed with them (135 to 130, for example).

You need some internal cam skewers.

jimmuller 

What southpaw said.

Lascauxcaveman 

Data point: when this happened to me (both times) the axle was a little too long. I fixed it by rearranging spacers or adding a washer within the lock nut.

YouthxCrew

I've fixed this by putting a derailleur claw on the inside of the dropout (where the derailleur hanger will hide it) to make up the space. Cheap and easy.

juvela

have run into this on more than one occasion. always with campag nuovo tipo skewers. changing the skewers solved it.

gomango

Agreed.

Narhay

Maybe the axle is too long on one side and too short on the other? Count the threads on the axle on either side.

verktyg 

Lots of good ideas about dropout alignment and axle lengths...

I've almost done a face plant several times when honking up a hill and the rear hub shifted bringing the bike to a screeching halt!

Now I always check the dropout alignment on my bikes and ones that I work on plus axle lengths and QRs so I haven't run across those particular problems.

A lot of skewers made after the mid 80s seemed to have been designed for semi-horizontal dropouts and don't have very aggressive teeth in the nut and lever bodies. I stopped using later Shimano QRs because they shifted in the dropouts too easily.

Also, some hub axles have the same problem with tiny or no teeth on the ends.

Campy and other brands with aggressive teeth have always solved the problem for me. Even the old Normandy Atom QRs worked better.

verktyg

Chas.

Henry III

I had a terrible experience with this bike crossing the road. Light turns green and I stand up to pedal and click into my speed plays and then the wheel digs into the left chain stay. Now do I hang my head and get off my bike and carry 3/4 of the way across the street or huff it out and pretend I'm on a 10% incline and muscle it through? I'm not one for bringing attention to myself so here I am pedaling like I'm on the Col du Tourmalet but just crossing a dang intersection. But I kept my composure and had my best Fonzie face on....ayyy. Haha.

gomango

Agreed.

Don't forget DA and XT skewers as well.

Henry III

Solved! The skewer itself was fine but the nut had all the ridges pretty much ground completely flat. I stole one of an old M950 XTR wheel I had laying around. Voila good as new and took her out for a spin and the wheel didn't slip once! She's almost ready for Thursday night crit races the beginning of next month.

verktyg 

YES!

I have early XT MTB hubs on one of my Colnago road bikes....

They're still smooth as silk!




@gomango, is that a small trout in your hand in the picture?

Due to the extended drought conditions here on the left coast, the Dept of Fish and Game has come up with a new hybrid... a Kowalski....



It's a cross between a Coho, a Walleye and a Muskie....

verktyg

Chas.

gomango

Heh Chas,

We ran into a school of these little Walleyes last summer at our lake place near the BWCA.

They were hitting shiners and chubs that were larger than they were.

I finally moved our group to another spot where the action was great on eater sized Walleyes.

Henry III

The rear skewer gave up the ghost and snapped at the threaded section which threads into the barrel that sits inside of the lever. Luckily was only a mile away from a bike shop and they gave me a free skewer to get by on.

CliffordK

My Campy skewers from eons ago don't have any teeth.

As the OP mentioned, one needs good teeth on the retaining nuts. However, not necessarily on the skewers. You don't want the wheel to shift, and the skewers not to shift... and thus bend a skewer. They are made to take tension force, not bending force.

verktyg 

You can have all the trout and salmon you want.... Nothing beats walleye and their smaller cousins yellow perch for shear eating delight!

verktyg

Chas.

verktyg 

Good point, I never thought of that...

But, but, I like all the teef i can get!

Dr Bukk Funny Teef


verktyg

Chas.

jimmuller 

Good heavens, Henry. You must have had that thing really clamped down. You really should check the dropout alignment.

And double check that the axle isn't offset too much to the right. That would happen if you are using a wheel set up for a RD w/claw on a bike with integrated hanger.

This thread calls to mind another one from last year where a noobie(?) was blaming his slippage on using a skewer with plastic teeth. I wonder what the resolution of that one was.

Henry III

I think it was from the serrated sections being basically smooth and then using gorilla grip to tighten it down to compensate for it. Then snap! I don't get what the claw reference is though. It's a 93 so it has an integrated derailleur mount on the dropout.

peugeot mongrel

A good internal cam skewer will fix it. Shimano internal cam skewers clamp like a gorilla.

jimmuller 

Premise: On every bike I've ever seen the two DOs were the same thickness. Forged DOs are usually about 5mm thick. The axle is nominally (typically, though not always) 11mm longer than the rear spacing, so you get about 0.5mm protruding from the DO on each side. If the DOs and axle position are symmetric, the amount protruding will be the same on each side. (With a shorter axle the end may not protrude at all, and it really doesn't have to.) The teeth on the skewer extend about 1mm away from the inner surface, so when the skewer is tightened against the DO the inner surface clears the end of the axle just enough to provided room for the spring.

Now if the bike uses a claw the DO's are about 1.5mm thinner (and [usually] stamped), but IIRC the claw is 3mm thick so that the total thickness of both DOs and the claw is the same. This lets the same axle length work for both arrangements. But there is one difference. With a claw the DS has more total thickness than the non-DS. A properly set-up hub will have the bearing cones offset to the left by 1.5mm so that w.r.t. the bike the axle will be offset to the right. Inotherwords, on the left it will protrude less because the DO is thinner, and on the right it will protrude more because it must also pass through the claw.

If you mount a hub set up for a claw on a bike with forged DOs the axle may stick out too far on the right, and tightening the skewer may simply tighten it against the end of the axle instead of against the DO surface. If you mount a for-integrated-hanger-on-forged-DOs hub on a bike with a claw the axle may stick out too far on the left. This doesn't have to be the case, and won't be if the axle is on the short side, but it is possible.

I'm surprised this isn't discussed in C&V more often, but then, most of us aren't in the habit of swapping wheel between high-end and low-end bikes.