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Give Your Wheels New Hope

Today is Thparkle’s 1st Birthday! I’ve been shopping around for a nice birthday present and have had a difficult time finding just what I wanted. Parts inventory and back-order issues are commonplace for anyone that has tried to build a Fat-Bike from a frame set to a complete bike. One of the most elusive items for many builds, recently, has been quick release skewers (especially 170mm). Thparkle’s been wearing a set of mis-matched Salsa skewers, taken off of two different bikes from the stable at the fat dash bike dot com secret underground research and development facility for the last little while. I really prefer my bike to be as black as sin in every way possible, so I’ve been searching for two black Salsa quick releases with no hope in sight.

When we attended the great interbike council in Las Vegas, I shared my sob story with the nice gentlemen at the Hope Booth and they told me that they had a skewer in the pipeline and that they even had some with them….but none in the booth. Suddenly, there was Hope! Fast Forward to early December and BAM! Mr. Smith lays this bit of bike jewelry on me for Thparkle’s 1st Birffday gift!

I’ve been using Salsa QR’s on all of my bikes for a long, long time. The Hope skewers are a similar animal, to the Salsas, with one major exception. Where the Salsa’s have a curved plastic grommet, at the lever, pivot point, the Hope’s use brass. You can see it pretty clearly in the pictures. Time will tell if this is an improvement or just something for bloggers to blather on, about.

The new skewers required just a bit of a trim to make the end of the threads flush with the nicely finished end cap, which is totally normal. The first few times that I took the front wheel off, I noticed a bit of a sharp ridge, on the inside of the hope lever, that hurt my finger, when I applied pressure to open the lever, but if you move your finger over, it works just beautifully! I usually go nuclear gorilla tight on my QR’s, so YMMV. Thparkle is now one step closer to complete blackness and that makes us both very happy. The old red and black mis-matched set of Salsa skewers are already back on the bikes, from which, they were borrowed and all seems peaceful and harmonious, which is saying something.

Check out all of Hope’s components at http://www.hopetech.com/

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2 Responses to Give Your Wheels New Hope

  1. Nicholis December 18, 2012 at 8:28 pm #

    I’ve been waiting for these to become available. I have a set on my non-Fatbike and put those through 9 years of ruthless abuse and they are still going strong. Where did you pick these up at?

  2. Adrian December 20, 2012 at 12:50 am #

    I have been using Hope skewers for years, they are the goods, only if they were made in a 170/135 pack.

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