Originally Posted by
ksisler
Seems like a real screw up in the design department or more likely the accounting department. But could not one just add a thin nut to the nut-less side of the hub and then adjust the bearing like on a normal bike. I don't think I have seen a fork that couldn't stretch enough to allow adding that millimeter or 1.5MM to the total OLD distance.
They almost certainly had a reason for it. If Raleigh had been trying to make the bikes cheaper, there are an awful lot of things they'd have been able to cheap out on before they did anything as drastic as leaving the locknuts off the front hub. And I seriously doubt Raleigh's design department "screwed up" on something that simple, when the rest of the parts and bikes they came out with were designed to last a century.
Originally Posted by
dedhed
Another reason I have found for loose feeling wheels is that the wheel has been replaced and the axle sticks out farther than the drop out so the nut only tightens agains the axle. This has been when wheels came off a cast DO bike and installed in a stamped DO bike.
This is completely true, but it's only valid if you're dealing with a quick-release axle, or one with a bolt-through skewer that works in the same way as a quick release. This wheel has come off the same bike, and it's a nutted axle anyway.