'springing' a rear stay

[mig]

i'm sure this has been asked before but how readily will a 130 OLN rear fit into a 531 frame built to 126mm?

my feeling is that this is generally okay..

[meic]

After almost seven years and over 18,000miles my 531 Holdsworth is still surviving this treatment.
Though if I had used a 12 tooth top ring instead of 11 tooth the chain would have eaten too much from the chainstay.

[Mick F]

I used a 130 in my 126 Mercian for a few years with no problems at all. I went from 9sp to 10sp with it like that too.

Only problem was if I needed to take out/replace the rear wheel - it was a bit of a fiddle to push/pull. When the frame went in for refurb, I got them to re-set the rear triangle.

[Brucey]

531 is a Mn-Mo steel which tends to give a softened region near each brazed joint. The result is that cold-setting seems to be pretty harmless in these frames, up to a point. A lot of hand made 531 frames come out the jig after brazing well out of track and are routinely cold-set during manufacture.

By contrast Cr-Mo frames often have hard zones near brazed or welded joints. It has been my impression that these frames are somwhat more prone to crack, especially if they are heavily cold set or used under some kind of residual stress (as springing might produce). But I can't be sure, because a handful of cracked frames is hardly a fully representative sample.

cheers

[Chuck Glider]

I've done this on a 1987 Peugeot racer, and just hand springing the dropouts (not cold-setting, just opening em up a bit). The bike has been used for commuting every day for 6 months now with no issues at all. It's just 2mm either side. That said, this particular steel frame is quite light and springy, so I'm not sure if it would be so easy with a stiffer steel frame (e.g. if it was 531ST)

[Robbiebee]

Hi

It will fit, as I have done it in the past, but there is a chance you can damage the chain stay, so with my Mercian Professional frame I took it to Kevin Winter and he re spaced it for me for £15

Money well spent

[james01]

Shouldn't be a problem, we're only talking 4mm. An old trick is to substitute thinner washers and nuts on the axle ends, you can usually find at least 2mm saving here.

[thecycleclinic]

Problems are likely to come taking a 120mm track frame out to 135mm to fit an alfine, I have never tried that and I never will. I have spread frames by 4mm (126mm to 130mm) and by 5mm (130 to 135mm) with no issues at all.

[JohnW]

I've not done this exactly, but years ago I had a 531 frame with a 120 rear end, and when it was demoted to being the work bike, I put 126 wide hubs into it. It did 100 miles a week, every working week for over ten years without a problem.

Then I was made redundant. I never blamed the bike for that.

The only problem was that it was more awkward to put the wheels with the wider hub into the frame.