Switching Back Wheel Between Bikes

[NetworkMan]

I want to switch a rear wheel from my best bike to my shopping bike. Trouble is the wheel is 135 OLN and the shopping bike is a 1992-ish Dawes Horizon built when touring bikes were still 130 OLN.

I live in South Devon and previously failed to find anyone local who could cold set from 130 to 135, in fact one person said 'just spring it in' but I don't like that idea. This month I thought I'll drive to SJS in Bridgewater and get them to do it. I emailed them to ask but they advised me to go to some place in Bristol! Presumably when SJS stopped frame building they closed their workshop for all work except building up bikes with frames from Taiwan.

So, question 1, does anyone know of anywhere close to me who could cold set the frame from 130 to 132.5 or 135 mm.?

Question 2 - is it possible to switch hubs from 135 to 130 mm without cutting out all the spokes and starting again?

or

Question 3 - can any of the internals - axle, spacers etc. be switched from a 130mm hub to the 135 mm one and the wheel redished? Hub in question is a 135 mm Deore LX about 4 years old. I have an older wheel with a 130 mm Tiagra hub from about 2004 with the external grease seals.

Any more ideas?

[fastpedaller]

Personally I'd just ensure all my hubs were 130mm rather than bend the frame.

[rjb]

Sheldon Brown has a good article on how to spread the stays on a frame. It's not difficult but you can only do this to a steel frame. Not aluminium or carbon!

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/frame-spacing.html

[hamster]

The Sheldon method works well and is really simple. I did it a couple of years ago on a 531c Witcomb. The whole process took 15 minutes, and that was being extremely careful and taking several goes to widen it.

[crazydave789]

a 5mm flex shouldn't be a problem, I don't think I worked on any regular bike (raleigh, falcon, dawes, CB etc..) as a kid that didn't need the dropouts pulling apart.

it is designed to flex.nowadays I see the opposite, frames are set too wide which make sit easier to drop the wheels in but you still end up with a few mm of flexing.

you are probably reading too much into it.

[NetworkMan]

The Sheldon method works well and is really simple. I did it a couple of years ago on a 531c Witcomb. The whole process took 15 minutes, and that was being extremely careful and taking several goes to widen it.

I did read about his method using a 5-6 ft. piece of 4x4 IIRC. I even have an old fence post in the garage!
Was yours just a 5 mm widening?
Did you have to tweak it to get the tracking right after you'd got the spacing right?
The dropouts must end up not quite parallel but I suppose a 5mm adjustment isn't enough for this to be an issue?

Frame is 501, fork is 531, stays unknown but I believe they are chromo.

Perhaps I'll be brave and give it go!

[NetworkMan]

Personally I'd just ensure all my hubs were 130mm rather than bend the frame.

Hello fastpedaller!
Yes that's an idea but the trouble is that this hub was part of a pair of wheels from RoseBikes in Germany. Anything with a rim width of more than about 15mm and even moderately heavy is part of a "trecking" bike and comes with mountain bike hubs.

[hamster]

The Sheldon method works well and is really simple. I did it a couple of years ago on a 531c Witcomb. The whole process took 15 minutes, and that was being extremely careful and taking several goes to widen it.

I did read about his method using a 5-6 ft. piece of 4x4 IIRC. I even have an old fence post in the garage!
Was yours just a 5 mm widening?
Did you have to tweak it to get the tracking right after you'd got the spacing right?
The dropouts must end up not quite parallel but I suppose a 5mm adjustment isn't enough for this to be an issue?

Frame is 501, fork is 531, stays unknown but I believe they are chromo.

I used a bit of 75x35mm timber, around 1.5m long. The frame has horizontal dropouts and I then re-aligned the dropouts with a closed adjustable spanner. As for tracking, I bent the stays one side at a time and took each side out 2mm (126mm spacing to 130mm). The method was a little rocking on the timber, measure, repeat. It didn't take much force at all.

[Brucey]

simple solution; just respace the hub to 132.5mm. You can do this with most shimano hubs.

The wheel will then spring into the frame nicely.

cheers