NYCpistarider

I want to respace from 120 to 126. I have seen a lot of posts from folks who have gone from 126 to 130 with no problem, but anyone done 120 to 126, which is a slightly wider change?

derogis

Hi NYCpistarider,

I did it on my 1978 steel benotto frame 1 year ago and it works really fine.

NYCpistarider

Thanks for the reply. What method did you use? Did you reset the frame or just jam it in?

sch

Jamming in works but requires three point distraction for those of use who don't have
upper bodies. One foot, both hands to get the wheel in. The formal way is to use
a screw operated spreader to over spread the rear triangle in a near symmetric fashion.
Since there is considerable spring back this will have to be approached cautiously.
There is a slight, usually negligible angle to the dropouts with this and nitpickers will
then bend the dropouts to compensate and use a frame alignment set to check the
final alignment. The shadetree way is to pull things apart with same foot and both
hands and check the spread now and then and stop around 128-130. Risk is that the
braze/weld will break at the brake spreader or at the BB. With steel brazed, lugged
frame the risk is low. Welded frames a bit higher. Not enough to worry about. Cost
is a new paint job after simple repair and maybe chasing the threads on the BB.
I just did the one foot and two hand spread to put the wheel in when I did this
to a PX10 3yrs ago. Steve