Thru Axel advantages vs Quick Release

I'm building up a bike (Yeti 575) and want some info on what your actual experience has been on thru axle vs quick release wheel sets. Not what thru axle is supposed to do on paper, but what you all actually experience when you're out there. Can you give me some insight on the advantages and disadvantages of thru axle and what I might expect if I convert to thru axel?
Thanks all

 

I use thru axle so I won't look like a freaking roadie

 

Stiffness and tracking are definitely superior on a through-axle fork. Also, you never have to worry if you tightened the skewer tight enough.

 

Stiffness is the biggest difference, followed by braking efficiency (although that's related to the stiffness thing as well). As someone who went from 9mm QR to 9mm through, I can honestly say avoid the 9mm QR like the plague. The only real benefit to the quick release is speed of removal of your wheel.

On an unrelated note, I just upgraded to a 20mm QR (new marz 55ti) and, dear god, it is awesome.

 

I got 20mm front and 12mm rear on my rip9 I just built, and I really haven't noticed a difference. I haven't gone back to a QR style bike since I've been riding it though, so I may notice then but uhh...yeah. I didn't expect to really be able to notice much of a difference. At least not the way I ride now.

 

In the last few months, some tests were done on the stiffness of QR versions of several forks and their Thru-Axle counterparts.

From the 9mm through the 15mm models, the advantage in stiffness was too small to be noticable. Over that, more notable gains were apparent.

Sorry I don't have the reference handy, I'm sure it's either public by now, or will be soon.

So, if you're gonna do thru, might as well do it right and go with a 20mm+ axle. Unless you're one of those riders that doesn't clamp their QR's down tightly. Then you might see a bigger benefit.

The biggest benefit is less liability on part of the fork makers.

 

I like how my front disc rotor is always in the exact same place with a thru axle.

Otherwise, I can't really tell. My thru axle fork is a Fox 36 with 1.5" steerer tube and my quick release is an older Reba 29er. Obviously the Fox is much beefier, but I can't tell how much is from the thru axle specifically...

 

I personally didn't notice a difference....

My FR bike (w/ 20mm) had heavier duty fork and heavier duty front wheel then my XC/AM bike so there were a lot of differences to be felt b/c of the style of bike....for me to be able to tell stiffness in 1 component was too hard...

IMO..if you are building it as a light trail bike go w/ QR if you are building it as an aggressive AM go w/ 15mm thru.....20mm is more then you'd really need

 

if it isnt always in the same place with your quick release theres an issue that needs to be fixed, the qr should always sit flush in the dropouts

 

Your front rotor should "always be in the exact same place" with a QR also. If it's not, then your wheel is not properly seated in the drops...

Most of the "improvements" in the last few years, tapered headsets, thru axels, etc. are mostly designed to sell mountain bikes...and make parts to maintain your current bike difficult/impossible to obtain, thereby REQUIRING you to buy a new bike... For 99% of us, a top of the line bike from 5 years ago should be technologically advanced enough to outpace our abilities... I.E. My 2006 GF 29er can do way more than my body/skills can. A tapered steartube, bigger stanchions or a thru axel is not going to make me a better rider...

 

one thing about qr and 20mm forks I have crashed hard enough to move my QR wheel in the dropouts. A through axle will never move, but you might break/bend/mangle the rim

 

Well said....I'm a firm believer that most riders only "feel" some of these little things b/c the have heard they exist and has very little to do w/ their riding skill/bike performance like they claim

 

Are you referring to the test from Rock Shox? (or the test that Rock Shox contracted)

Without a good reference to this test and its methodologies, the below comment is hearsay and meaningless.

 

15 years ago with 70mm of travel, flex wasn't an issue. 10 years ago with 100mm of travel, you were still good to go with 9mm. 5 years ago, 120mm was more the standard, and flex probably started becoming more obvious with the longer and longer forks. With 140mm, my fork felt like a wet noodle on g-outs with the 9mm QR. Went to 20mm which felt great, then 15mm, which felt just about as good.

You are building a bike with 5.75" of travel, you definitely should get a thru axle.

 

put it this way. would you trust a single 6mm or 7mm bolt holding your wheel on (that is the size of the long bolt that goes thru the 9mm axle, the forks just rest on the 9mm axle and the 6 or 7mm skewer applys the pressure to hold everything together) yes it has worked for many years and i mean many (circa 1930s)
old technology, but lets all live in the now people bigger and better things are here.

 

Hmmm, you must be in the industry!

 

:welcome:Hey Kirk!

 

Like many, I upgraded forks when I switched from 9mm qr to 20mm thru. I went from a 2006 130mm 9mm qr Revelation to a 2010 150mm 20m thru. Everything else (wheelset, frame, tires, etc) stayed the same.

I like my bike better now. I have seen a noticeable improvement in my front end. It tracks better and deflects less than it used to, particularly when hammering over rough stuff at speed. It's obviously really hard to say whether this is due to the thru axle, or if instead it's attributable to any of the innumerable other changes (more travel, slightly slacker geometry, redesigned lowers, new internals, etc) between the two forks. I never had issues with my front wheel falling off so I don't really see this as an advantage.

I haven't really found there to be any real downside to the 20mm thru. Any added time to remove the front wheel is incredibly minor (like a second or two). And it adds maybe 50 grams of weight over a qr setup in a place on the bike that matters very little.

 

The QR compresses the fork legs against the axle lock nut. This force is horizontal. The fork dropouts sit on top of the axel, not the QR. The QRs only strength requirement is holding things together horizontally, which it's quite sufficient to do. A 9mm axle, whether it is a QR or thru-axle, supports the hub bearings in the same way. There is fundamentally no difference. The stiffness of the hub/QR interface is derived from the axle, not the QR. If you jump up to a 20mm axle, you will have a larger surface area to distribute the forces from the bearings and you will have a stronger, stiffer axle than a 9mm, no doubt. The question is, do you need it? In either case there should not be movement at the fork/axle interface. I personally have never bent an axle, had a QR fail or experienced any other deficiency of design with a standard QR.

The more likely places to find movement are; improperly adjusted wheel bearings, soft tire side-wall, fork stanchions/upper/lowers and headset (if not adjusted properly). The trend in mountain bikes seems to be making things more and more moto, which is cool if all you do is shuttle or ride resorts. If you actually ride your bike UP the hill also, most of these "advances" are just heavy and unnecessarily over engineered.

Now, if I were working for a bike manufacturer, getting paid to sell their goods, I could just as easily tell you how awesome the new tapered headtube is, and so what if you need to buy a new headset and fork if you want to upgrade your frame? It's so worth the extra stiffness of those oversized lower bearings. I could also tell you how rad and supper stiff our new wheelset is, of course you're going to have to buy a new fork because it's a 20mm thru-axle and since you're buying a new fork, that's only available with a tapered steer-tube, you're also going to have to buy a new frame, since you're current frame is sooo last year with it's tiny 1.125 upper and lower headset... but trust me... after dropping $4,000 so that you can have 1.125 upper and 1.25 lower headset bearings, a tapered steer-tubed fork and a 20mm thru-axle wheelset, you are going to be so stoked at how much stiffer your bike is... you're going to rail through turns like you never could with your old 1.125 headset and 9mm QR... and it's only going to set you back 4Gs.

Gimme a break. They are selling us Viagra for our bikes... stiffer this, stiffer that, stiffer, stiffer, stiffer... Frankly, my bike is plenty stiff, thank you very much...

Don't even get me started on 10 speed...

 

Well that was a little rude. And by the same standards, every post in this thread could be said to be hearsay and meaningless.

It was a 3rd party firm that'd done it for an mfg. I'll admit I skimmed it and went for the conclusion, since it's inconsequential to me. ...if it crossed my desk, I'm sure it's public by now. ...but if it's not, I'm not going to be the one to out it. That's an interesting way to ask for a reference though.