Cycling UK Forum

I am looking for an inexpensive narrow rear wheel with quick release, to fit a 1982 French bike which has 126mm ONL dropouts, x6 gears and 23mm tyres fitted. Recommendations?

+ Any thoughts or issues to watch out for please regarding such a wheel and suitable replacement gear block; it may be possible to fit a 130mm ONL but would prefer to stick with 126mm if possible. If I went to 130mm would it cause any unforeseen gear alignment problems or is it just a matter of adjusting the rear mech?

Putting a 130mm hub into a 126mm frame is a classic. The Dura-Ace 74xx hubs even had tapered locknuts to ease this procedure. No problem at all. Slight adjustment of the rear mech is necessary with most wheelchanges, even when the gear count and the hub width stays the same.

back in the day I ran 7s hubs which I respaced to 128mm to fit in a 126mm frame; (at 126mm the dish was too much and I had a fair amount of trouble with light-built rear wheels). If you want to run 130mm hubs then I'd suggest that it would be best to permanently reset the frame to suit.

If you want to run 6s (indexed...?) then I'd suggest using a 7s freehub, and using 6 sprockets (from a 7s or 8s cassette) with additional 0.5mm spacers (for 7s sprockets) or 0.7mm spacers (for 8s sprockets) to make the spacing the correct 5.5mm.

It is a faff getting the spacers sorted out but you can re-use these with replacement sprockets in the future. HG cogs (even at 6s spacing) offer pretty slick shifting by comparison with most old-style freewheels.

If you are running friction shifting then I'd suggest going to 7s since you can buy cassettes and hubs fairly easily. CRC had (have?) old RX100 rear hubs (7s 126mm IIRC) on sale for cheap which can be respaced and would be an excellent starting point for a rear wheel build for you.

cheers