Cycling Weekly — December 07, 2017

Is the quick-

release dead?

In a word, maybe, explains Simon Smythe

Photos: Gruber Images

Tech

t’s 90 years since Tullio

Campagnolo dreamed up the

quick-release: high on the

Croce d’Aune during the 1927

Gran Premio della Vittoria, the Italian

wanted to flip his rear wheel to change

sprockets but his fingers were too numb

to undo the wing nuts that held it in

place. Back down at sea level in Vicenza,

Campagnolo patented the quick-release

hub with hollow axle, skewer and

cam-lever clamp.

And up until very recently everybody

was perfectly happy with that system.

But the introduction of disc brakes to

road cycling has changed all that.

A thru-axle has a much larger diameter

than the time-honoured Campagnolo

quick-release skewer — 12mm is the

standard that’s been settled on — and

bolts directly to the opposite, threaded

dropout before being clamped in place

using a QR-style cam lever.

Mountain bikers have been using

thru-axles for much longer than us,

and that’s mainly because they adopted

disc brakes earlier and then found that

suspension forks needed a stronger, stiffer

way to pin the fork legs together and resist

torsion from the caliper, which is mounted

low compared with the rim braking

system and only operates on one side.

Disc-brake road bikes, even though

their forks are rigid and therefore

better able to resist twisting forces,

are universally being made for thru-

axles despite it being more awkward

and much slower to change a wheel.

The thru-axle system is also heavier,

adding around 100g to a bike’s all-up

weight — a significant amount when you

consider how hard manufacturers have

been working to get frames below 800g.

However, the road bike industry is, as

ever, on the case.

Mavic’s Speed Release system,

unveiled at least year’s Eurobike, goes

some way towards eliminating the

awkwardness and slowness of the thru-

axle wheel change. The axle stays on

the wheel so the ‘third hand’ needed to

hold a removed axle is no longer needed.

Plus the system is a claimed 50 per cent

lighter. Enve — owned by the same

parent company as Mavic — has adopted

the licensed system and has launched its

Expert: Tim Bishop,

Maison du Vélo

“I don’t think the QR is dead. I

can see it in the long term but

for the short to mid term it’s both [QR and

thru-axle]. There are a lot of high-end bikes

out there and people want to get 10 years’

use out of them because they’ve spent a lot of

money on them. They’re not going to be able

to retrofit them with thru-axles.

The QR: efficient but losing

touch with new technology

Discs and thru-axles will

eventually overtake the QR

Discs are held truer

with a stiffer system

34 | December 7, 2017 | Cycling Weekly