Road Bike Axle Standards

At first 135mm was the most common rear axle spacing with 150mm used for dh.

Road bike axle standards.

Let s review current axle standards. How to measure a bicycle thru axle most thru axles are described by four measurements and you might see them described something like this. Good old fashioned quick release. But 142mm and 157mm soon superseded these standards with the extra 7mm allowing a stiffer interface with the frame.

You ll still find inboard bearings on many budget bikes often with a solid square taper axle. 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. Shimano s 11spd road cassettes are just a little bit wider than their mountain bike cassettes. For example i have disc cross road and xc bikes.

Boyd is probably right on his where are standards headed estimate. There are three common types of freehubs drivers. 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. Most every modern disc brake road cyclocross and gravel bike uses a 12 100 front hub standard and a 12x142mm rear hub standard.

Hg stands for hyperglide. Backward compatibility will continue to be necessary as frames and forks with other standards will linger for a long time. It is yet another axle standard to worry about. Road bike bottom bracket standards.

Driver vs free hub hg mtb vs hg 11spd road vs xd. 15 x 100mm 127 length 1 5. 130mm old which means rim brakes can t stress this enough. 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.

You can see more details about these measurements below. 130mm old rim brake only. 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.

As of 2018 fatbikes and disk brakes have led to a several new axle length standards. How does this affect you the bike consumer. Some wheels and forks have swappable end caps or dropout inserts allowing for the use of either 12 or 15mm front thru axles. Some bikes like trek s split pivot full suspension bikes use thru axles that are up to 50mm longer than the hub dropout width.