On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 12:07:59 -0500, Sheldon Brown
<
[email protected]> may have said:
>Cheapo bikes these days often come with horrible axle nuts and no
>washers between the nuts and the dropout.
I suspect that you may be referring to the ones with the lovely
serrated flanges that are unsurpassed in their ability to tear up the
surface of the dropout. (I've seen some even less useful nuts used as
well, though, such as the ones with a waffled face on the end of the
hex.)
>This is bad news in general,
>and should never be used on a dropout that has been bent open then
>closed up again.
>
>As the nut turns while pressing against the dropout it is very liable to
>force it open.
Teeth grab, transferring torque as lateral force shoving the dropout
open, yup, BTDT, even on a dropout that had not previously been fouled
as far as I could tell. It was on a bike that Huffy would have called
"crude".
>If possible, buy a pair of proper track nuts with captive washers. If
>not, buy a pair of "serrated axle washers" to fit between the nuts and
>the dropouts,
I recall that a discussion of track nuts earlier in the week produced
the information that loose-flange nuts with a 24tpi threading were not
to be had. If that's 3/8-24, I will note that a dig through my Olde
Hardware Boxe turned up exactly one such bit; I don't have a clue what
it was originally used on, but there it was. (It's amazing what 35
years of mechanical packratting can produce at times.)
In the past, when really annoyed by the perversity of machinery, I
have created such loose-flange nuts by finding a washer that was thick
enough to be useful and cutting a shoulder into the nut to allow it to
center in the bore of the washer. The trick is having a sufficiently
large selection of washers to choose from. Cutting the shoulder is
usually no trouble at all; it can be done on a drill press with a
couple of carefully selected sharp files, among other ways.
>or convert to quick release.
Alas, there is one situation in which even this is not an option; the
aforementioned coaster brake...but you knew that. Coasters are, of
course, not exactly the center of a lot of high-tech development and
intensive boutique design marketing, so it's hardly surprising that
the support for unusual requirements involving them is meager.
--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail.
Typoes are not a bug, they're a feature.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.