Mountain Bike Thru Axle Vs Quick Release

Thru axles thread through the wheel hub and circular dropout holes.

Mountain bike thru axle vs quick release.

I may be looking for a suspension fork and some may be thru axle but want to use my current wheels on it. The decision on the rear gets a bit murkier. Thru axles work better to keep wheels attached to the bike. Currently the most widely used axle on bicycles is the 9mm quick release or qr skewer.

While my current road disc bike has quick release front and back and they work just grand if i was getting a new disc bike road cross or mountain it would definitely be a thru axle front. If you like to use the newest and most modern cycling equipment thru axles are a good choice. This popularity is changing though as more bikes are coming standard with wider thru axle designs. You may recognize it from such activities as taking your front wheel off to put your bike in your car or locking the back wheel into a mag or fluid trainer.

Thru axles are more modern these days most mid range to high end road touring and mountain bikes come with thru axles instead of quick release. When mountain bikes first went to thru axles the standard was 12 142 which was the same effective width as the quick release hubs they replaced. Thru axles are also inserted through a hollow hub axle but they re bigger rear ones are 12mm in diameter and screw into closed dropouts. The quick release standard for disc rears is to have the dropouts 135mm apart with 10mm diameter dropouts.

At first 135mm was the most common rear axle spacing. Skewers use a camming mechanism to secure the wheel to u shaped fork dropouts. Early cyclocross bikes borrowed the 15mm front thru axle diameter but as disc brakes became more common on drop bar bikes they all standardized to 12mm.