Originally Posted by
repechage
The late Volagi bike company's first models had 135 rear spacing, they used disc brakes and went to the mtb parts bin for hubs. When "29ers" caught on, the oddness became less so, but I don't see a rush to adopt 135 spacing road hubs.
A tragic tale overall, sued by Specialized, they came away intact but poor, then one of the founders sustained a nasty crash that put the skewer in the business.
Of course all of the disc-braked road bikes and cyclocross bikes are using 135mm, which puts the manufacturers of cranks in a bit of a quandary when it comes to Q and to chainline.
I installed a 9100 crankset onto a Cervelo recently, and after centering up the chainline with the center cog of the cassette, noticed that the left crankarm was several mm further out from the rim than on the right.
So apparently this crankset is optimized even more for 135mm than for 130mm, and in part this bias might reflect the added freedom of frame design that wider spacing affords, especially when wide tires are to be accommodated. To me this is going backward and I would use a different crank unless it was a disc-braked bike I was installing it to.