On Monday, October 21, 2019 at 5:35:01 PM UTC+2, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, October 21, 2019 at 7:47:07 AM UTC-7, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Monday, 21 October 2019 10:41:09 UTC-4, wrote:
On Thursday, October 17, 2019 at 12:22:06 AM UTC+2, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 3:12:32 PM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 11:59:37 AM UTC-7, Tom Kunich wrote:
Everyone always grinds lawyer's lips off as a first order of maintenance.

Really? On CF forks? Not me.

-- Jay Beattie.

As much as it pains me, I'll sort of agree with Tom on this. On all but one of my bikes I have ground off the tabs on the fork ends. The only fork I did not grind off is a carbon fork with an aero blade so the fork end is about 2 inches long. Can't grind that much metal off. All my carbon forks have aluminum dropouts, not carbon dropouts. So grinding is safe.

Even on carbon dropouts I grind off the laywer lips. On my CF bikes it is just a little carbon blob. Grinding, actually filling, off that little blob doesn't compromize the strength of your fork. It is as save as shorten your CF steerer tube or MTB handlebar. There is no load on that part.



Which brings up an irritation. With no fork tabs, you do not have to unscrew the dropout nut. Just flip the lever and the wheel falls out and goes back in perfectly. But sometimes when getting rides from friends, they will take the front wheel off my bike to put it on a rack. And when they take the front wheel off, the very first thing they do is start unscrewing the quick release nut. Which messes up my quick release width and I have to then readjust the dang thing when putting the wheel back on. Most bicyclists have been made stupid and dumb from this dumb fork tab feature. They no longer know how to correctly remove a front wheel on a bicycle.

+1 Laywer lips is an incredible stupid safety feature. Every time you take out your frontwheel creates a safety hazard.

An inconvenience, yes, but I don't think they're a safety hazard.

They are because every time you can forget to adjust the QR correctly.


Lawyer Lips almost defeat the purpose of having a quick release.

I have them on a disc CX bike that has QRs, and they're not getting ground off. I also have them on a Emonda SLR frame, and they're not getting ground off. Why grind up a nice set of light CF forks? I'm not racing, and they do have a legitimate safety function. It takes 30 seconds to spin the QR nut, and in the event I zone out and forget to get the cam tight, I've got some back-up.
I might think differently if super-fast wheel changes were an issue, but they're not. It's inconvenient for the wash stand and roof rack (rarely used -- mostly use a hitch rack), but I endure. I also endure with through axles..

They are always an inconvenience and only a safety feature for something they created themselves.

Lou

-- Jay Beattie.