I have this problem on two 1970s French 531 bikes (PX10 and Jeunet 630). The forks "look" straight, but when I put a properly dished wheel in the fork, the wheel is canted to one side, i.e., the center of the tire is a few mm to the left/right of the brake hole in the fork.

My LBS, which is pretty good, looked at one of the forks, and did some minor adjustment with a dropout alignment tool and what seemed to be a VAR 478 fork alignment jig (http://sheldonbrown.com/var/pages/var0006.html). But, the wheel's still off center.

I’ve seen all the posts about filing dropouts, but can I simply center the wheel in the fork, then close the QR, even tho one end of the axle is not fully seated in the dropout? Isn’t this what we do with rear wheels?

Both bikes are long term projects, although I have collected enough French threaded parts to start getting them on the road. I haven’t ridden either bike yet to see if it pulls to one side or has other problems.

I could start filing the dropouts or send the forks to a shop such as Yellow Jersey in Madison WI who seems to have the tools/expertise to delve deeper into the problem, but just centering the wheel seems so much easier!

Thanks for your thoughts on this,

Marty