New wheel off-center in fork
 

Just picked up a pair of used wheels built on Ultegra hubs. The front wheel seems to sit a couple of mm to one side. The tire clears the fork, but just barely. Got a loose spoke the other day and the tire rubbed till I tightened it up to re-true the rim.

How to remedy this?

Thanks in advance.

Steve M.

You need to re-dish the wheel . Loosen the spokes on the side of the wheel that to close to the fork and tighten the other side . do 1/8 -1/4 turn each until the rim is center in fork . If you feel you can't do this yourself then take the wheel to a shop who can . Before you do this make sure the wheel is in both dropouts .

If the previous owner had misaligned forks they may have padded out one side of the axle with washers. First check that the axle sits evenly in the fork then see if one side has a bunch of spacers or a thicker cone or lockring.

Flip the wheel around and put it in backwards. If it is now closer to the other side, it's the wheel. If nothing has changed, it's the fork.

1. Check the dropout alignment. 5 minute job at the LBS.
2. Check the dish of the wheel.

As BikeWise1 hinted, if the tire/rim location changes when flipping the wheel - you have a dish problem.

All assumes of course the forks are mangled to begin with...

=8-)

Are the forks straight? As a test, flip the wheel so that the quick release lever is on the opposite side of the bike. If the wheel is now off-center toward the opposite side of the bike, it's the wheel. If it's off-center on the same side of the bike as it was, then it's the fork.