I took a look at the bike last night. As I think I posted a week or two ago, the rear dropouts are now at least 140mm wide. When I mount the wheel it isn't all the way in the dropouts and I have to turn the non-lever side many, many times to basically crank the dropouts shut around the hub. Before I took the wheel out I looked at the dropout/hub intersection and the left side seemed to be at an odd angle, like something that doesn't fit was being made to fit.

Also, the wheel wasn't actually out of alignment like I thought when I originally posted. When I was able to set the upside down and look closely, the gaps between the tire and frame were all pretty inconsistent. I guess what I saw yesterday morning was an illusion.

I am concerned about the widened dropout. No idea what might have caused that as I have only had a 135mm wheel in there but I think I'm going to move the wheels and chain back over to another frameset, one with vertical dropouts and go back to a 1x7 format. The original bike is fun as hell but now when I ride, in the back of my head is a catastrophic failure of the rear end.


ETA: I just discovered that the rear QR skewer is visibly warped! I've got a 1995 700c rear wheel with the same hub so I'll just grab that skewer but are there any implications for the hub itself on the 26" wheel the warped skewer came out of?