Road Bike Axle Standards

How does this affect you the bike consumer.

Road bike axle standards. Mountain bikes mostly use a 15x100mm front thru axle and you might still find a few road bikes that adopted that standard early on but 12 100 is more future proof for road. 130mm old which means rim brakes can t stress this enough. Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask. Driver vs free hub hg mtb vs hg 11spd road vs xd.

There are three common types of freehubs drivers. Hg stands for hyperglide. 130mm old rim brake only. Let s review current axle standards.

You can see more details about these measurements below. Not a single axle among them conforms to that envisioned future standards set. The problem of disk brakes pulling the hub out of the front dropouts see james annan s article has been addressed with through axles which insert into a fork with a hole rather than a slot at the end of each blade. But this does build in constraints at both extremes of the.

Some bikes like trek s split pivot full suspension bikes use thru axles that are up to 50mm longer than the hub dropout width. Road bike bottom bracket standards. In this example 15mm is the diameter 100mm is the o l d 127mm is the overall length and 1 5mm is the thread pitch. As of 2018 fatbikes and disk brakes have led to a several new axle length standards.

15 x 100mm 127 length 1 5. It looks as if the pace of change in disc bike axle standards will slow now with 12x100mm front and 12x142mm rear thru axles dominating. Most every modern disc brake road cyclocross and gravel bike uses a 12 100 front hub standard and a 12x142mm rear hub standard. At first 135mm was the most common rear axle spacing with 150mm used for dh.

You ll still find inboard bearings on many budget bikes often with a solid square taper axle. It is yet another axle standard to worry about. Shimano s 11spd road cassettes are just a little bit wider than their mountain bike cassettes. Some wheels and forks have swappable end caps or dropout inserts allowing for the use of either 12 or 15mm front thru axles.

Backward compatibility will continue to be necessary as frames and forks with other standards will linger for a long time. Good old fashioned quick release. Boyd is probably right on his where are standards headed estimate. For example i have disc cross road and xc bikes.