Touring - Dishless rear wheel?

So the rear wheel on my 86 passage seems to have no dish to it. I understand this makes the wheel stronger for the weight of the rear panniers but having the wheel off center forces me to have sort of a weird setup with the spacers on the rear cantilever brakes and the clearance on the left side of my rear fender is kind of sketchy. In addition this bike is not easy to ride with no hands on the bars and I suspect the off center rear wheel is possibly to blame for the veering to one side.

Anyone have experience with this sort of thing? Could I re-dish it easily with a truing stand or would I need to replace all of the spokes to do that. My roomate tells me that the drive side spokes on a dished wheel are normally 2mm shorter. Is it even a good idea to re-dish it? Could I center the wheel somehow using spacers on the axle? I presume that a 40 spoke rear wheel would be strong enough for loaded touring even with the dish but I am inexperienced in this area.

Any knowledge would be greatly appreciated.

Actually, I've got to correct myself. Looking at it more closely, it seems to have some dish, although less than what I'm used to seeing. Wheel's still off center though.

Whether they`re dished or not, both wheels need to be in line with each other with the rims on the centerline of the frame, so no spacers on the brake calipers needed and the fender shouldn`t be affected at all. First things first, be sure your wheel is mounted correctly, which will be all the way into the drops if it has vertical dropouts. If that`s the case or you don`t know how to check it, swing by your LBS for a check of the whole situation and ask them to show you what`s up so you`ll have another "arrow in your quiver" when it comes to troubleshooting in the future. Something is fishy with your bike and it may or may not be the wheel at fault.

Yes, rear driveside spokes are generally about 2mm shorter than nondrive spokes- if your wheel really is impropperly dished, the only way to find out whether it can be put right is to try it and see. Spoke lengths have to be close, but they don`t need to be exact, so whether it was built with correct dish and later changed, or built with insufficient dish there`s a good chance it could be centered with the spokes already there. Although I`d still bet the wheel dish isn`t your real problem.

Well, yeah I know that I shouldn't need the spacers asymmetrically set up on the brakes and that the fender clearance should be the same on both sides. Hence my posting to inquire about this issue.

The wheel is most definitely mounted properly. I suppose my best bet would be to take it to the bike co op here and see if the spokes have enough length to re dish it myself. Was mostly hesitant about this as the bike came this way (albeit used) and I presumed that there might have been a reason for the wheel being set up in such a way.

I think you misunderstand what "dish" is. The amount of dish will not mean that the wheel is off-centre. Dish only affects the rim relative to the centre of the hub, not the wheel which remains centred in the drop-outs. If your brakes, which seem to be V brakes are not centred on the rim, but the wheel is centred, then the most likely cause will be either that the arms are sticking on the braze-on pivots or the spring tension on the arms need adjusted.

Have you tried installing the wheel backwards, any chance? Anyway, you can get a good guestimate of your spoke lengths by taking off the tire and rim strip, then peeking at the back side of the nipples. When the threads bottom out, they usually stick out ~1mm or so above the nips. I can`t imagine anybody using aluminum nipples on a 40h wheel, so figure they could be untrheaded until the spoke ends are maybe 3mm below the surface. If it looks like a go, give it a shot. When you get it awhere you want it, you can unthread a few all the way to double check how much thread is engaged.