Just put my rear tyre back on and the thru bolt has sheared off at the head. How safe is it to ride this bike with only the threaded end screwed in?
Have a race tomorrow and no bike shops have the part easy enough part to source next week but wanting to know whether my race tomorrow is done for or risk the broken bolt with minimal risk
Cheers
by PrimaryMembership904
9 Comments
I don’t think it’s gonna fall out considering the other side is threaded. Depending how important the race for u is id play it safe
That sucks.
Probably don’t want to race like that, just in case. You risk hub damage or injury if it works its way out.
If you must race, you could rig something up.
If I HAD to I would tap in a screw where it broke and find a way to anchor it to keep from rotating or sliding out, almost like a cotter pin.
It’s hard to tell from the picture but is the thru axle hallow? Hallow enough you could feed some lock wire through and tie it up on both sides.
If the other end of the axle is hallow, you could try putting in a large headed screw or bolt so it wouldn’t pull through.
Best of luck
Don’t race on it dude, nothing is pulling the dropouts together anymore. The thru axle doesn’t just keep the wheel in place, by locking the hub to the rear triangle it adds a lot of strength in that area. Instead of a bolt in a critical area you now have a pin with no retention on one side
Do not race. It’s sketchy enough that I wouldn’t ride it by myself, let alone put other people’s health at risk if it causes a crash.
Riding the bike this way is psychotic.
This is not rideable.
The thru bolt holds the rear axle in place using tension. Then your weight is on the axle, not the thru bolt. Since one side broke off, it is no longer in tension and instead you would be relying on the thru bolt instead of the actual axle. The thru bolt is not strong enough for that.
Also, when you turn the bike and lean on one side, your rear end flexes. Usually this is fine because the rear end at the axle is in tension through the through bolt. Now, you will instead have a high chance of the left chain stay flexing to where the thru bolt comes out of that hole, and then your wheel bends the thru bolt. This could easily destroy your wheel or your frame.
Sorry but this is absolutely unrideable until you replace the axle. You risk permanently damaging the bike and yourself.
Sometimes there is tooling on 2 areas of modern axles. There may be tooling further in on the axle for a larger Allen key. Or possibly tooling on the non drive side. Check that first.
A bigger question is how to get it back out again 🤔
Sorry about your race friend. This is not safe to ride on, the frame will come away from the wheel and things will go from bad to worse quickly.