Son’s Nerve was put up on the rack last night as it was making horrible noises when braking. Of course, the pads are shot (he didn’t seem to think it was a problem!).

On removing the rear wheel to get a better view of the pads (mainly to show him what fully worn down pads look like!), things didn’t feel quite right.

The Nerve AL 6.0 (2015 model) doesn’t come with a through axel, instead it comes with a QR skewer into a non-standard thumb nut which is fixed into the frame.

The wheel has only been off twice before – once when he first got it when I wanted to check how things worked, and once when he did it himself out in the wild to sort a puncture.

When I came to remove it last night I noticed two odd things:-
– firstly, the skewer came out with only the lever at the end on it; no spring, no curved plates etc etc. I strongly suspect either both a spring and the plates, or just the plates (if that’s all there was) fell off in the forest when he was repairing things last time, and he never noticed they were missing.
– secondly, on the inside of the drive side there was a slightly mangled spring inside the hole where the axel would locate. It was too mashed to put the wheel back on properly, so I’ve removed it. Why would there (should there?) be a spring in here? And does anyone know what part I would need to buy to replace it?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Matt