Originally Posted by
dddd
I used a pair of inverted forks for years, one was standard and the other was spread out and had the dtopout slots enlarged to take rear wheels.
I often bias the dish to the left side when a wheels is going to be of marginal strength for the anticipated usage.
My CX bike in particular has a rearward weight bias and has a history of bending rear wheels when I manage to "save" a slideout out on the course.
A 1mm bias to the left of perfect dish makes the wheel stronger, so I can get 2-3 years out of an $80 Open Pro rim on average. I previously used 15/16g spokes, and so also switched to thicker 14/15g spokes.
I have to say that I've never noticed any effect of the dish on how the bike rides, but I could easily adjust the frame's rear dropout alignment to compensate for the skewed dish.
My bike's rear spacing was 114mm with a 5-speed Pellisier hubset, but I've increased it to 132mm in the most recent adjustment and simply added 2mm worth of washers to the left end of the Ultegra hub's axle.
My partner has been building tandem and touring frames with a small deliberate offset for decades as this lets you build a stronger wheel when you are using hubs with standard spacing. The only issue is that well meaning shop rats will want to re- true the wheel and then "straighten" the frame because it is 5mm off.
I built my touring bike with a similar offset to increase wheel strength and chainline... no-one but me can tell and no-one else will work on it and it tracks straight and true.
A better solution is to build single bikes with tandem spacing and with a little frame offset and then you can build zero dish 9 speed wheels with standard parts.