DougG

I changed my wheels for Mavics a couple years ago, but now want to take out my original wheels with some different tires and swap the wheelsets back & forth depending on the type of riding I'm doing. I'll be installing the same type of cassette on the old wheels that I use on the new ones (Shimano 105 12-27T).

My assumption is that I can swap the wheels around without having to do any derailleur adjustment, or at most just a minor tweak on the barrel adjuster. Is this correct? Everything's machined pretty precisely in that area and I wouldn't expect any significant variance.

CACycling

Most likely. I would be surprised if the cassette location between the dropouts would be much different between the two hubs. And you don't need to have both cassettes use the same gearing. Depending on the riding you will be using each of the wheelsets for, you might want to think about different gearing as well as different tires.

The one area you may have more of an issue with is brakes. The rims may not sit in the same place on both sets. This could be a bigger issue but you won't know till you try.

noglider 

Determine if the freehubs have the same lateral measurements. These are (1) locknut-to-locknut, distance between locknut and cassette and (3) overall width of cassette. If these are the same, you're in luck.

jgt_madone_newb

Based on my experience swapping my Kysyrium SSC SLs with other wheels, Mavic hubs are a little different than other Shimano compatible hubs, which is why they require the thick spacer that Mavic provides with the wheel set. Thus, the cassette alignment of the Mavic wheel will probably be a little different than your other wheels, requiring a little tweaking of the derailler adjustment when you swap back and forth. Not a huge deal.

Al1943

You should be able to do this swap with no adjustments, but as others have said, you may need to tweak the spacers a bit.
Most recent MAVIC wheels require a 2 mm MAVIC spacer behind the cassette. This is because a MAVIC cassette is 2 mm wider than a Shimano 8 or 9-speed cassette. If you have Shimano 10-speed (you haven't said) you will need the thin Shimano spacer behind both cassettes in addition to the MAVIC spacer on the MAVIC hub.

Al

DougG

Thanks for the responses. The bike is Shimano 105 equipped, so it uses the thin Shimano spacer in addition to the Mavic spacer. It seems to me that the Mavic spacer just serves the function of spacing the Shimano cassette outwards to the position (relative to the derailleur) that it would be on a Shimano or other Shimano-compatible wheel. So I'm guessing that the geometry will be very close.

As mentioned, the brakes could be a minor problem, but fairly easy to adjust for.

Al1943

If the Shimano cassette came with a spacer at the back then it must be 10-speed.
You still haven't said.

DougG

Sorry if I wasn't clear; I thought that the current Shimano 105 group was only available in 10-speed, which is what mine is. Of course, I didn't say that it was the new stuff, so can understand the confusion.

Camilo

For what it's worth, I have a Mavic wheel (Aksium) and a Reynolds wheel. My set up is 9 speed, but I can't imagine it would be any different with 10 speed, given the "special" Mavic spacer.

I swap regularly with no tweaking needed.

When I first started doing the switching, I needed to do a little tweaking every time - not much, 1/4 to 1/2 turn of the barrel adjuster, but I needed to do it.

Out of curiousity, and because I got a new torque wrench, I found that the solution was to tighten the cassettes onto the hubs exactly the same, at the recommended torque (on the cassette). I had previously just used feel, i.e. "good and tight". What I found was the "feel" was quite a bit lower than the spec'd torque. I believe the spec is 40 Nm, and I had it torqued to 25 or so.

When I used the torque wrench and torqued them exactly the same to the spec'd torque, the shifting between the two became virtually perfect.

DougG

That's a good tip, Camilo. I always use a torque wrench whenever possible, and I'm sure that I torqued the cassette onto the Mavic wheels to spec, so I'll do the same on my OEM wheels. FWIW, torqueing the lockring is a bit problematic because of the locking ridges that grab, click, and slip as you're getting there. I think I ended up using an old beam wrench instead of a clicker.