Originally Posted by bhdavis1978

Hi Andrew,

Thank you very much for taking the time to give me such a thoughtful and considered reply. I really appreciate your help, and the time everyone in this thread has taken to give me their help. I try appreciate it all.

I have a few follow up questions. First of all, what would I do to check of the wheel is out of dish. Is that something I would need to take the bike to a frame builder to check or should a good mechanic be able to help me out with that. I have a similar question about the fork being out of line. I'm not even sure what that means?


Dish is the term given to having the rim centered between the axle lock nut ends. For a disk or cogged wheel where the flanges are not equal distant from the axle's center point this means that one side's spokes will have a steeper angle between the rim and flange. This is very easy to check w/o any fancy tools. A flat bench top or counter with four stacks of the same coins is your tool. Three stacks of the same heights are positioned so when the wheel is laid on them, with the rim sitting on the stacks, the wheel/rim is basically parallel to the surface. The fourth stack will be less high and only tall enough to reach from the surface to the close axle end cap/lock nut. Flip the wheel over. If the rim is centered WRT the axle end caps/lock nuts then all four points will match up as before. Of course the wheel needs to be fairly true to start with. If the axle end caps don't sit on that fourth stack the same way with each flip of the wheel then the rim is off center, the wheel is out of dish. Professional dishing tools mimic this across the rim and reach in toward the axle end caps but with an adjustable axle end cap pointer. Repeat this a few times to insure no errors.


I can understand how the wheel being out of dish could affect shifting, but I don't understand how that can't be corrected by aligning the derailleur, or why it would affect the quality of shifting differentially depending on the relative position on the cog, that would strike me as a problem caused by being out of parallel with each other rather than being slightly out of plane. I hope this doesn't seem like I'm being difficult, I'm just trying to understand.


The miss alignment that a hanger bend (or twisted der/cage) is generally far greater an offness then a wheel's slight cockedness when in a frame. So a wheel that sits a bit off usually won't effect the shifting much. Besides the datum that any hanger alignment is done WRT is the rim (or the hub with the Shimano tools. Still the hub and rim are "solid" to each other). So an aligned hanger will negate/correct for a cocked in frame wheel.

Second, how would the fork alignment affect shifting? How does the front end of the bike affect the shifting on the rear derailleur? Again, I'm not trying to be argumentative- I just want to understand. All of this seems like good news to me because it makes me think I can possibly keep this frame without too much difficulty.


The fork alignment shouldn't effect shifting at all. But the mention of riding no hands being hard and the bike tending to steer off the straight and a fork that's off will contribute to handling issues. I am adding more then one issue's possible causes.

The biomechanical stuff is interesting, but I am really confused about how that would affect shifting. Or were you speaking to the issue of being able to balance?


Again this won't affect shifting. But more description of the full aspects of alignment that many don't bother to talk about but still are part of a straight bike.

Do you have any suggestions for me for things I should do and/or say to a mechanic? Incidentally I am going to a bike store tomorrow in Vancouver to test ride a few bikes out (as a way of testing out their frames). It's a bike shop that does mostly custom frame build outs, so I could always ask that guy to take a look too.

Thanks so much,
Brad