Skewer Shootout

One of my first aftermarket bike part purchases was a set of KCNC road skewers. That may seem like an unlikely starting place to begin upgrading parts on your bike. But it's the perfect gateway drug, if you will. A seemingly innocuous skewer upgrade can quickly turn into an unquenchable thirst for more and more bike parts, which I continue to indulge today. But back to the point � skewers are actually a pretty popular upgrade. They're particularly popular with the weight weenie crowd, because they represent a good ratio of dollars-to-grams-saved. You can easily drop almost 100g of dead weight off your bike for a paltry $70 or so. It's low-hanging fruit for shaving grams off your bike.

But skewers have an additional role to play for those in the aero world. You see, many skewers (particularly OEM parts) are big and bulky. They stick out in the wind like a hitchhiker's thumb, and can easily rob you of a Watt or two. Aftermarket skewers have a lot to offer in terms of saving frontal area, not to mention weight. There are some interesting solutions out there, and I've never seen them reviewed from the triathlete's perspective.

In this article we're going to take a look at six different sets of skewers, each with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. Yep, these are small parts and don't often get a lot of attention on triathlon websites. But I think this is a category worthy of attention. For all the fussing about I do about hiding cables from the wind, it makes perfect sense to worry about a bulky skewer as well. So, off we go.