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About a year or so ago I bought a Fulcrum Red Metal 5 wheelset which came with Fulcrum-branded QR skewers. I noticed a few weeks ago that the front one started playing up; upon tightening and closing it, it would suddenly lose its tension with a big 'click' sound, in other words, when pushing it to close it towards the fork, before it had a chance to close fully there'd be a click and you could feel it go limp straight away, having lost all tension (pardon the inevitable innuendo). I replaced it right away with another skewer as this obviously isn't an area you want to risk it in.
Fast forward to today and I'm out on a ride, rear wheel suddenly drops out of the dropouts on a climb. Turns out upon inspection that the same has happened to the rear skewer, loses tension when attenpting to be tightened and therefore doesn't hold the wheel in securely. I count myself lucky that I didn't find this out on a descent. I check the tightness of my skewers before every ride and it seemed fine when heading out, then failed during use.
Is it normal for this to happen if skewers are getting on a bit? Is it adisable to change them fairly regularly? Am I supposed to be doing any maintenence on them, e.g. squirting some sort of lubricant in there every so often? Or were they just dodgy ones and they shouldn't have failed in that way?
CBA reading that, but shite skewers probably. Buy shimano ones, always awesome.
+1 Dave
Another for Shimano skewers. I've only got one standard qr out of both my bike's but that's a Shimano and always will be. Another brand of ano one would be pimp but for something as vital as a qr skewer I always go for function over form.
Thanks, but I wasn't seeking recommendations for skewers so much as answers to the questions at the end of my first post. Is it normal for the to fail after a certain period of use, do they require any maintenence or were they just rubbish?
They shouldn't fial like that, full stop. Dodgy skewers. No maintenance other than occassionally lightly greasing the length on the skewers and the thread and a tiny drop of chain lube or similair on the pivot.
I have skewers from about 1995, none of which have failed like that. The cheapest one has "failed" by it's pivot nylon wearing to the point it's really stiff to move under tension. But they shouldn't come loose.
The rear skewer that came on my 15mm Red metal zero's is pants I binned it after a couple of rides and put the mavic one off my ST's on. As above though shimano whilst not light have the best clamping mechanism of any skewer.