My steel road bike has your standard old Columbus horizontal dropouts. I have a skewered rear wheel, and I keep having trouble with it moving in the dropout, and then hitting the seat-tube… you can understand this makes movement difficult!
The dropouts are chromed which of course reduces the grip on the dropout.
Now it’s happened on and off but I recently got it under control when I started tightening my Fulcrum skewers up quite hard. This morning I tried using some Ultegra wheels, and the old problem resurfaced.
Now what should I do- just torque it up as hard as I can, or are there other, more permanent solutions? I was thinking for instance that I could get one of those DT Swiss ratchet skewers that apparently gives you an extra 50% more torque.
Okay, so this issue is starting to piss me right off.
Is there an issue to putting the rear wheel at the front of the horizontal dropout as opposed to the back- see picture:
For some reason, the rear wheel is more secure in the front of the dropout. Actually the rear wheel is more forward in the dropout than shown.
I’m gong to try an old steel skewer and see if that helps things. These modern aluminium skewers are useless.
The security 5-sided skewer works okay, but the ends are made of aluminium, and as I torque it up, little metal filings come off- not good.
Also the special wrench that comes with the skewers is freaking small, so you can’t get much torque.
Horatio, my mate had the same problem on a new colnago master he had built up recently. He had a sram wheelset and had to change them to an old pair he had lying around because the rear skewer kept slipping out of the dropout while out riding.
The LBS checked his skewer and it appeared to be a problem with the bolt’/interface part of the skewer against the dropout - the one he had on his wheelset wasn’t an original and the ‘grip’ of the interface was too soft ie the metal had fatigued a bit - similar to what you described - he solved it by getting a good replacement skewer (mavic from memory) and the problem was solved.
I’ve got ‘ahem’ a couple of road bikes each with campy wheelsets - I’ve never had any trouble with the skewers slipping out.
I had this issue with a ti skewer in a chrome dropout, but solved it by getting some Ultegra skewers which have steel grip faces. However, I’m assuming that the Ultegra skewers on your wheels didn’t work for you Horatio?
Well they work, but the wheel has slipped once with them hence my apprehension.
The new Ultegra skewers have one end that is made of plastic which doesn’t help getting bite into the dropout. The old skewers are all steel.
Ideally, I’d like something like this:
These dropouts used to be standard for all road frames, so I wonder how they fixed this issue…
This might be silly, but why not paint the drops (or clearcoat maybe) so that there is something for the skewer to bite into? enamel paint might work as its quite thick, im guessing you wouldnt need much.
Also ensure that the cam surfaces are clean and greased, this will reduce the closing force, or for the same closing force give you a greater clamping force. Of course a cam or nut strength issue may come up, but then it’s clear that your QR just isn’t man enough regardless of what you do. Really, QR isn’t designed to provide high tension.
