Did any of the old 26" wheelsets get spec'ed at 130mm and take hyperglide cassettes? If so, can someone point out what details I should be looking for. I've searched Ebay for "130 26" wheels", but never come up with what I am looking for, although I did see some Suntour hubs recently.

I want to update an old MTB frameset that is spaced at 126 to take a 7-8 speed cassette. Am I searching for something that never really existed? I assume, perhaps wrongly, that MTB wheels went from 126m, to 130mm, then on to 135mm.

No there were 130s, I have a pair on my 1987 stumpjumper comp. It would be easy enough to build a pair of 26 inch 130 mm wheels.

Do the hubs seem original, or did you build the wheelset yourself? If the hubs are original, what are they?

...look for anything carrying 8 speed cogs or greater on the back. IIRC, they were universally 130 by then. Honestly though you're better off looking at any wheel you buy in person, and if you do that you can measure it. There are a lot of things that can be wrong with a used wheel that won't show up on a photo.

Shimano ATB freehubs used 135mm OLD for 8 speed HG. However, there were 7 speed ATB freehubs with 130mm OLD that were HG and UG/HG compatible.

Your assumption is correct. 130 was once MTB spacing.

It's been a while though. You'll probably have to build some up. I had to build wheels for my Clem MTB just to get silver hubs that weren't disk brake types.

I have a set like this available, PM if you're interested. 130 Shimano hubs with Weinmann rims. The rims look similar to Arayas

There absolutely were! I converted a Shimano Exage 7-speed rear hub from 130mm spacing to 126mm for my rando bike, since that was an easy and inexpensive way to get a 36h 7-speed hub. Converting from 135mm spacing to 130mm spacing would be just as easy. Just cut about 5mm of length from the rear axle with cones installed, and use them to chase the threads on their way off. Then reassemble the hub with 4-5mm less spacer on the NDS and re-dish.

And [MENTION=98880]9volt[/MENTION]'s got the hook-up.

Since a bike of that era is probably steel, you could cold-set (i.e. bend) the frame to fit a modern 135 hub quite easily.

https://sheldonbrown.com/frame-spacing.html

i have several older steel frames that i just spring enough to get the 135 wheel in. when the wheel is removed, they pop back to 130. for a while surly made their bikes 132.5mm, so you could spring them to fit a 135 or clamp them down on a 130 with the QR.

If you're going to respace the frame anyway, it'd give you more options to simply go all the way to modern 135 OLD spacing. 130 makes sense only if you happen to have 7 speed shifters and other 7s stuff already, and can get some decent used wheels as in ^^^.

If it isn't steel, it shouldn't be respaced at all.

I have a number of 559mm rims on 130mm O.L.D. hubs, from the mid-1990s. These are on older Altus/Alivio/STX "Parallax" hubs, usually designed for 7-speed cassettes. FH-MC32 is an example of a hub to look for.

https://wheelsmfg.com/tech/PDF/hub/fh-mc32.pdf

I did this on a hub from the Box of Crap to create a 7 speed 126 mm spaced wheel for my Miyata. The hub was 135 mm and I changed out a spacer on the left side and cut off about 8 mm from the axle. It was not hard at all.

Look for 7 speed mtb hubs, with the cassette threading on both outside and inside of the freehub body, these are slightly narrower than the freehub bodies without threading on the outside.

Have these on 89 Nishiki MTB - 130 spacing

Shimano tricolor (fh-6400) also fits the bill (there are several models, look for the one with 130 spacing