Looking for advice really -- got an old Austro-Daimler-Puch steel road frame (531, lugged, cream colored paint with blue accents - not sure if that helps identify year, one guy thought it might have started at 120 and was respaced to 130, can't find much info on the web) with stamped dropouts -- the spacing is currently at 130mm... anyone foresee any major issues if I were to respace it to 117-120mm? LBS guy said might need to bring the ends parallel again - he said could probably even just use an adjustable wrench if they were stamped dropouts... or reckon I could just bring the frame in after I respace it and have them adjust the parallelism. How's all that sound?

I'd just do it. Everything that you pay somebody else to do on a project like this takes away part of it's charm.

You can probably push the dropouts together using just your hands. I run a straight edge from the head tube to the dropouts and measure to the seat tube. Both sides should be equal. The drop out angle won't change very much. I've got a tool for aligning them, but you could probably make due with a big creacent wrench and just eyeball them parallel.

Have fun!

Aye, the respacing I was definately going to do myself with a 2x4 probably and some string to check alignment against the headtube... Once that's done I reckon I'll take a look at the parallelism of the dropouts...