This seemed to be a talking point a while ago but there doesn’t seem to have been a rash of such occurances and I haven’t thought much about it. However, yesterday I was bedding in some front brake pads, down a hill (with just the front brake applied) and ended up with brake rub at the end of the run. That’s not unusual, I often get a touch of rub after prolonged baking (usually at the rear) but it usually sorts itself out – and this refused to shift. Now it could have been a sticky piston or simply that the pads had jiggled about a bit and one of the pistons did look a bit prouder than the other, unfortunately I couldn’t push the pistons in with the wheel in – which would have proven or not whether it was a piston; I had to remove the wheel. Anyway, once the wheel was back in everything was fine again but it left me wondering whether the wheel might have shifted under braking.

The forks are Rebas, I have good solid Shimano skewers which are done up tight with the lever meeting resistant just before 90 degrees. On the down side, I’m pretty heavy (15+ stone) on a none to light bike, so must generate a fair bit of force. The front rotor is a 180.

Its always easy to figure out if the wheel has shifted under braking if you think beforehand – put weight on the frame in its upright position and open the skewer, if it slipped it’ll now clunk back into place.

Personally I doubt it, I rode some of coed y brenin with my front skewer bearly single-finger tight with a 185 disk and my 17st lump behind me doing some hefty braking and it never shifted fortunately. It made lots of rubbing noises as the fork flexed, but it never shifted in teh dropout as per the aforementioned rash.

It happens if you have a series of things stack up against you – you would know if it had as the QR would have loosened off.

I managed to get a qr to move under heavy breaking last week. Luckily it didn’t come out all the way so i still have all my teeth.

Shimano qr, 160mm rotor, p2 forks.

It’s funny though as there’s no hard and fast tightness for skewers. For example my missus hasnt a hope in hell of doing one up as tight as I do, hell even I struggle to undo the ones I’ve done up sometimes!