What would you do about this? I have two hairs of clearance there between tire and fork. The other side has a good inch. My new 26x4 tire is substantially beefier then the standard 26x4 tire my bike came with but apparently something isn't aligned right. Same issue in rear but a couple washers fixed it. Up here a couple washers are already maxing out the fork

Not a great idea to add washer with an aluminum frame

Beyond that it does not look like the front axle is not fully seated in the drop out, which could lead to not so fun type of failures

True, it's not seated fully because I did originally before this happened, THEN I put the washers in but that didn't help enough so then I put something little under there(1/3 grinded chunk of a bolt)to force an angle on.. So it's better than with it seated fully.

I plan on going at it again from scratch but I'm pretty sure somehow it's leaning to that one side, presumably always had but not noticeable with the stock tires. Which would be fine if such imperfections were considered normal but I just wanna see if there are adjustments, fixes to possibly make here.

Do people ever have to take out the fork and bend one side or the other?

You're going about this wrong.

Take out all the extra spacers and whatever. Fully seat the wheel in the dropouts and note the clearance on both sides of the fork. Now put the wheel in backwards and check it again.

If the close spot stays on same side of the fork, it's a fork problem. Most easily dealt with with a few passes with a file to raise the other dropout notch, or by just dishing the wheel to hide the misalignment.

If the close spot changes sides, then the wheel isn't dished properly. Fix the dish.


Don't put any washers back in.

Kontact thanks

"just dishing the wheel to hide the misalignment"

Is new to me. I'll look that up

Kontact ah, that makes sense. It won't be the direction wheel is installed as it's got a hub motor... Unless they built the wheel wrong in the factory. So I'll find out later when I get to it. And I've "dished" a wheel before. A little. So if that's what's in order hopefully that won't be too complicated

It isn't that you are installing the wheel backwards to fix the problem. You are just putting it in reversed to see if the wheel is properly symmetrical or not. "Dish" is control of center on a wheel. You can dish a wheel so it is symmetrical or asymmetric.

Your wheel is one or the other, and you may solve your problem by making it one or the other.

Kontact ah, so if my wheel was dished symmetrical but the fork isn't then I'd de-symetric the wheel to compensate for the imperfect fork?

Yes