Pukeskywalker

I bought a wheel set from universal cycles... road it for about three years

I'm moving them to another bike with tight chain stay clearance and noticed that the wheel is about 3mm closer to the non-drive side. But, the wheel spins perfectly straight.

In four years of tinkering with bikes, I have seen wheels that are out of true and wobble, but never this. Is that normal?

I am worried I lost a spacer somewhere... planning to re-dish if no concern is raised...

HillRider

Unless you did indeed lose or misplace a spacer, the wheel may have been improperly dished from the supplier and you just noticed it. I can't imagine a wheel going "uniformly out of true".

furballi

You can mount the wheel backward on the bike and recheck the spacing. If the tight gap is now on the drive side, then the wheel is not properly dished. I rarely see more than 0.2 mm on a hand-built wheel, even after 30K miles.

It's pretty hard to lose a spacer.

FBinNY 

Start by confirming whether the wheel is or isn't dished correctly. You don't need special tools. If the frame has vertical dropouts you can corss check by mounting the wheel flipped left for right. If it's no closer to the other stay it's the wheel, if it's still close to the same side, it's the frame. If the distance changes, better o worse, mirrored or not, than it's a bit of both.

The more positive way to check is to make your own dishing gauge. You'll need 3 soup cans (except beef barley) and a handful of quarters. Place the cans in a triangle to make a tripod to support the rim. lay the wheel down, and stack up the quarters to the locknut. Lift the wheel, flip over and compare.

Pukeskywalker

Great suggestions on flipping the wheel in the frame. Thanks everybody

The problem was not the wheel! Now I have another problem...

I failed to mention that this is a 126mm (or 128mm) dropout frame, being spread by hand when I drop the wheel in. I am guessing this accounts for the ~3mm of spacing I mentioned.

If anyone has read this far, is it normal to have to re-dish when spreading the drop outs to 130mm? Logic would dictate the that frame would spread evenly on both stays. I'm beginning to think this frame has been in an accident (it's fairly scratched up).

FBinNY 

There's no assurance that the frame will spread evenly (the same on both sides). Things like right chainstay crimps can cause uneven spreading.

But I've never seen that much difference so if a properly dished wheel sits to one side, odds favor that the frame itself is misaligned. You might confirm this in the relaxed condition (no wheel at all) using the string method.

In any case you never dish a wheel to the frame (except if it's an asymmetrical design). The wheel is always dished to be centered between the locknuts (symmetrical) and if that doesn't center properly, you address is by correcting the frame.

BTW- the odds of a wheel changing dish while staying true (or nearly so) are a million to one (or thereabouts). But I've seen many people change the dish accidentally while truing. Because of the tension difference, it's very easy to unconsciously move the rim to the left while working on it.

Pukeskywalker

Thanks FB. I appreciate the info. I have an idea for testing that last part... I'm going to drop it into another frame (a 130mm dropout) and measure. If it's off-center there, the wheel is the culprit. I don't think it's ever been trued since I bought it, but I may have messed with it and forgotten about it.

Then I will string measure the frame and think about my options.

Thanks

FBinNY 

There are too many variables when using a frame to check a wheel's dish. Use my 3 can method (any 3 identical cans, or glasses will do) on your floor or kitchen table and confirm the wheel for sure. Then you'll know where you stand.

Myosmith

I like clever solutions. But then again, I like beef barley soup

Pukeskywalker

Update on this one, with some learning

- The wheel is not centered. I dropped it in my 130mm dropout bike and it also sits off-center by a couple of mm. I have vague memories of attempting to true this wheel, and likely put it off-center myself. Universal Cycles wheelsets are well made by my standards, and the other set I have are centered.

- The frame being spread is also not spreading evenly, compounding the problem. It has two chainstay crimps, as FDNY mentioned, that I believe are making it favor one side.

I am not sure what I will do at this point. I may rehab the beat up and out-of-true 126mm rear wheel that the frame came with, or buy a new set

FBinNY 

The easiest and smartest thing to do is to re-dish the wheel properly, after which you can address the chainstay flex issue if necessary. Use my DIY table top dish gauge as a guide and bring the rim to center. It's best to do this by first loosening the left side by 1/2 turns until the rim is most of the way home, then tightening the right by 1/4 turns to finish the job. If as you near the end, you feel the wheel could use more tension, tighten the right by degrees first bringing the rim too far to the right, then finish adding the final tension by tightening the left to bring it back to correct dish.

Remember to keep the wheel true or retrue as necessary (use the bike frame as a truing stand), because dish measurements taken on untrue wheels are meaningless.

When the wheel is OK, try it in your frame. Even if it flexes unevenly, It'll probably be minor, but if it bothers you spread the frame to match the wheel permanently so you can control the results. There's plenty of info about how to "cold set" a frame so I won't bother detailing that here.

furballi

Glad you were able to confirm that it's the wheel. It's not a big deal to re-dish the wheel by 1.5 mm. I also spread the drop outs of my Bridgestone 400 by a few mm with my Shimano 600 rear hub. The wheel is still centered on the frame. The frame sections around the bottom bracket and the rear brake are very stiff. Therefore, you will not see more than a few tenths of a mm in movement even if you spread the rear drop outs by 6 mm.

3alarmer 

Since the main PIA in cganging out the OLD for a wheel by taking out
or swapping out spacers to subtract dimensional width from you wheel,
if you are going to go through the redishing process you might be able
to shrink your wheel to fit your frame almost as easily.

This would eliminate your frame alignment/spreading issues, unless it's
already permanently spread off center.

Bill Kapaun

IF you have more than 7 speeds, you may have trouble dishing the rim more to the DS.
Those spokes are probably already near vertical compared to the NDS.
You can end up adding excessively high spoke tension to the DS or have excessively low tension on the NDS to get the dish where you want it. (maybe both)
IF this is the case, you might be better off just riding it with the dish off a bit, rather than risk an unstable wheel.
This is a case where an offset rim is desirable-
https://www.velocityusa.com/default.asp?contentID=591

Pukeskywalker

I did the soup can method and it was 1 quarter's worth out of alignment. I went to adjust and forgot the direction to turn the spokes. I ended up dishing it the wrong direction. A series of mistakes followed... three hours later the wheel is out of true horizontally and vertically. I'm taking it to a shop before I go any further. A little to caviler with this one. Last time I trued a wheel was over a year ago and it took me four hours. Annoying.

But, the soup can method works great. Very glad to have learned that one. Truing this wheel is farther than a I need to go though, I'm in too deep. Time to give someone money to fix it

Thanks everyone for the advice and helping me figure this out

FBinNY 

for future reference, wheel alignement or building is simple but it needs a certain amount of no distractions time.

Whenever I work on wheels, I turn off the telephone, close the door and look for a quiet place where I won't be disturbed or interrupted. Even so the most valuable wheel building tool I own is one of those small plastic clips they use to close bread bags. If I ever have to stop, I clip it to the last spoke worked as a place keeper.

Pukeskywalker

Haha, yes this is valuable insight. I was doing okay, even after dishing in the wrong direction, until I was distracted by our cat... then I think I turned half of the spokes on the non-drive-side one way, half the other... and then lost which spoke I was on. Things spiraled out of control from that point on.


In unrelated news, I just saw a post mentioning that the hub I'm using (Shimano 105) has a 3.8 drive-side spacer that can be removed and replaced with a 1mm spacer! So, I'm going to see if I can replace it, then take it to the bike shop to have it trued and dished to the new width.

FBinNY 

Something doesn't make sense there. Multispeed hubs are always set up with minimum clearance between the outermost sprocket and the frame. There is some variation, but it's in the range of 1mm or less.

Since the wheel has to be dished because of the space needed for the gear cluster, any wasted space to the right would needlessly make things worse. I can understand hubs with variable spacing on the left according to the desired dropout width, but the right spacing is based on the number of gears, and not otherwise variable.

Pukeskywalker

The point was moot anyways. The 105 hub I have does not have a spacer on the drive side, as far as I can tell.

I'm going a whole new route, I bought a velocity synergy O/C rim and I'm taking it to an LBS to lace it up to that.

I've learned enough from this wheel that I'm now dishing it properly, so something was learned. I'm going to keep practicing truing on it until the new rim arrives. This was a very educational thread, thank you FBNY and the rest of the posters.