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I'm hoping to use a pet trailer on my road bike which uses a thru-axle. My rear wheel dropout has a "housing" for the fat end of thru-axle (left side of bike). Unfortunately, because the thru axle fits very snugly in the housing, the trailer-connector blocks the thru axle from entering this housing, so I'm currently unable to connect the trailer to the bike.

That's my original problem. Now, I noticed that the thru-axle itself has a hole all the way through the center... So I was thinking, maybe I can fit a quick release inside of the thru-axle and attach the pet trailer to the quick release? Has anyone done anything like this? Or is this a recipe for disaster?

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    Most bike trailer manufacturers offer special thru axles that have a thread at the left end so that the trailer hitch can be attached there. They don't seem to be cheap though. For a child trailer I would definitely go for better safe than sorry, for a pet trailer it's up to you.
    – linac
    Commented Jun 7 at 4:43
  • Please add details. What is your thru axle size (length, diameter and thrad pitch) and what is the trailer hitch like (brand, or at least shape and hole diameter)?
    – Art Gertner
    Commented Jun 7 at 8:52
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    @ArtGertner -- thanks, I think your answer has given me enough info to move forward here! I may update if I get stuck on actual axle choices, but perhaps it's better to keep it generic.
    – Mike K.
    Commented Jun 7 at 22:50

2 Answers 2

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It will be safer to get a special thru axle to swap your stock one. Special thru axles are designed to accommodate trailer hitch.

Since you did not specify your TA sizing and trailer brand I will use Burley as an example: enter image description here

You can pick one of these for ~ £55 new or for £25-£30 used if you shop around.

Adding a custom QR skewer through existing thru axle will still cost you ~ £10 as you will need a fairly long skewer and might need to modify it a bit (posibly cut more thread and chop an extra bit of the skewer off)

As you can see savings are not that big. Just use the right part and ride safe.

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The big picture answer is buy a trailer thru axle.

As for whether the idea would work of putting a QR through your through axle for this: A lot of thru axles don't really have flat faces for the hitch to rest against if you were to do this. If this weren't a problem, and you're left cleanly sandwiching something like a Burley or Thule hitch beween the QR and the thru axle, at that point it's seemingly not really that different from how those hitches work normally. You're still experimenting with precious cargo, but it could maybe work. On any thru-axle bike you're getting into the realm of abnormally long QRs to do any such thing, like those for fatbikes. (QRs for 160mm-spaced tandems might get close but I think they'd mostly not be long enough).

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