The bikes were likely using disc brakes with hex keyed thruaxles and the drills were probably fitted with the appropriate sized hex key for "quicker" removal.

Seems like total overkill and questionable time savings using the drill versus a standard hex key.

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I think the bigger question should be "what exactly happened there?" in regards to the Alaphilippe wheel failure on the first day.

The wheel was obviously locked (wouldn't rotate) and then the thru-axle couldn't be removed even with the power tool? I'm trying to think up what failure (brake seized, fork broken, or what?), or combo of failures would result in that situation. Weird.

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Compared with QR skewers, through-axles help the bottom of the fork better resist torsional loads from disc braking. They also avoid the issue of dropouts unintentionally having multiple "positions" that a wheel can be clamped into, which is handy given the extremely tight clearances of disc rotor setups.

The drill is fitted with something like a hex key to unwind the through-axle.

Thru-axles are there to prevent the wheel moving in the dropouts and to apply sufficient clamping force that the fork and hub can do their job. They have the huge advantage that you can repeatedly replace the brake rotor correctly in the calipers.

Stiffness is provided by beefed-up fork legs and hub in combination, aided by extra spokes. Thru axles are not there to provide any extra stiffness and it would be a design flaw if they did.

I'm all in favor of thru axles on rim brake bikes, for convenience, but there's some discussion out there from mechanical engineers that cam skewers can achieve more clamping force than thru axles.

A powered drill i likely faster than a standard hex key and/or torque wrench. Thru axles have to be done pretty much equally tight every time to avoid disc rub.
But why they aren’t using tubeless with disc brakes or just switch bikes immediately is beyond me

Watching the Alaphilippe debacle, the drill in action, the inability to change the wheel in a meaningful time frame, and subsequently the discusison on various threads here on ST, it seems like disc wheel as a tool for pro tour racing during a failure situation is probably not the optimal tool for the job. When the bike is working fine and there is no need for a wheel change, fine, we can debate rim vs disc till we are blue in the face. But in a failure situation, it seems like the ability to get back on the road and compete, is hurt by disc vs. rim. Minimally the Mavic neutral support only carries rim brakes, so you are stuck waiting and hoping your team car is nearby for your spare bike or the drill working and quickly being able to change the disk brake wheel.

Neutral support at World Tour events carries both rim and disc brake wheels.

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I'm guessing that they were using a standard drill, and that it lacked the stall torque to unscrew that tightened thru axle. An impact wrench (what pit crews use) would have been the better option.

We might start to see two-mechanic wheel changes. One removes the axle and the old wheel. One has a drill with a new axle ready to affix the spare wheel.

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This article says that Mavic at the Tour de France only supplies rim brake wheels.

Which seems silly, if true, because then they're only neutral support for Ineos, Jumbo-Visma, and UAE?

Other than taking a whole "Mavic" bike, though I can't remember ever having seen someone take a Mavic bike.

I would see it rather differently.
- mechanic failure - he/ she botched the wheel change ?
- maybe didn't check the tools (drill) worked with the set ups the team had - obviously not well enough anyway, unless there was something V wrong like the axle had cracked and jammed or something (or maybe someone fecked up the installation and cross threaded it and used a drill on max torque to get it to seat ?)

- shite detail design by some bike Cos. The through axles do not have to be a hex socket head. They don't for a tiny aero fain and aesthetics.
No reason why the axle can't have a Lever on it to turn - in fact MTB through axles (Maxles and the Fox-developed 15mm front axle) has a QR style lever as well as threading through.


Through axles - those and discs do not have to be coincident. Mountain bikes used standard QR for over a decade with disc brakes (bigger than road discs too) before the bike industry decided to shift to through axles - but not specifically for discs and braking but for increased torsional stiffness for the 95% of the time not braking - so the bike actually goes where you point it. Front and back. Just as they have now gone to Boost hub spacings. QR on Mtbs never caused alignment problems on discs.

It was weird. I'm going to guess it was two separate issues: a bent rotor from a minor crash combined with an over-torqued thru-axle.

I suggest this because apparently Alaphillipe was back on the same bike only like 10 minutes after...he preferred the original to his spare. Just going off Simon Gerrans' testimony.

If it was that easily fixable to get the bike back to him in minutes, it must have been just a wheel swap. If it was a seized caliper or something almost no way he'd get the bike back.

 
I agree, if your team car is trapped behind, neutral support is ahead or riders are in between groups they are toast unless a teammate gives them their bike and it fits. The little traffic jams happen all the time with the follow cars due to the roads and crashes.

They need dropper post for that and they all have to carry a 6 mm wrench in their pocket. I saw a few instances when the two riders were just staring at the bikes waiting for support when a wrench would have sped things up for a quick wheel swap.

I concur.

Having used disc brakes and QRs for quite a long time (at least 10-15) years, I never had an issue with rotor placement in the caliper.

Also, one has to remember that the reason the front forks on MTBs needed to be stiffer torsionally is because the lowers on a telescopic fork typically only have an "anti-rotation" feature up at the fork brace. In other words, the length of the fork leg adds zero torsional stiffness. On rigid fork legs, this is not the case.

I often find this idea that thru-axles are "needed", or even a vast improvement, on disc-equipped, non-suspension bikes a bit of overkill.

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Oh you have: (Spoiler: it went so-so.)

Not even all of UAE, which is running both (Kristoff won stage 1 on a bike with discs). But it isn't true. Here's a relatively in-depth interview with Mavic.

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To be fair, thru-axles DO solve the problem of poor orientation of calipers relative to the dropout direction causing brake-force-induced wheel ejection.

Then again, forward facing dropouts go a long way to solving that "problem" as well, in a much simpler change...

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I wonder if the mechanic thought "I'll set the torque on this drill to the max torque for installing the axle" and didn't consider that the min torque to remove the axle could be ever-so-slightly higher than the max torque used to install it originally.

I had some DT Swiss axles on one of my bikes that had a built in lever. I loved those. Unfortunately, the threading on my 3T is different so i need to use the syntace axles that require a hex key.

It's too bad the Mavic Speed Release concept didn't take off.

I think flats are such a stupid reason to turn the race on its head. I really wish they just required a beefy tire for every rider so all are penalized exactly the same and punctures were no longer a race changer. The technology exists to prevent flats, just at a speed penalty. They require so many arbitrary things about the bike, why not require a kevlar belt in the tire or something like that? Would make flat changes a virtual non-issue.

On the specific issue, three stages into the race I am pretty confident the net benefit of through axles in a road race is negative given the time cost of a wheel change versus the very dubious benefits.

My preferred method.

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I would bet the mechanics are pretty careful about not over tightening axles. A ham-fist tightening job could cause excessive bearing drag and failure. Plus you likely to have to get quite a few of those wheels off at the end of the day for maintenance.

I have had a disc brake fail like that before. I think what happened was that there was a really slight rub. After a long fast decent it got super hot and locked. I don't know if it boiled the brake fluid but the rotor are skin sizzling hot and I hadnt been using the brakes at all. I would not be surprised to find out that he had a wheel change and there was a slight rub. My experience with disc brakes is that alignment can be pretty fiddly. Just about every time I swap wheels I need to re-align the caliper. I have no idea how you can expect to get a spare from the team car, or worse yet neutral support, and not run into issues with rubbing. I think normal pad to disc clearance is sub-1mm. so ten-to-one those mechanics are putting some extra powerful spring clips in those calipers to keep the pad as far away from the rotor as possible.

Saw these reviewed by GP Lama recently: http://www.rapilock.com.tw/...ugh-Axle-Series.html