That would make him a "lefty."

I found a set of nice Mavic GP4/Campagnolo LF hubs wheels. I thought great nice set of wheels, probably true, let use them! Mounted the tubulars and went for a 30 mile ride. On the way back, I did a no hands down a hill. I was surprised to find I had to lean to the left. I didn't have this problem with the other wheels so.... I checked the dish. Both were about 1/8" or less dished off center! What bike would support this configuration! Trued the wheels up and now fully centered.

I would check the wheels first. My recommendation is to do root cause first. Then you know what to attack and how. Lots of good options to check as listed.

I get a lot of factory wheels that are off by 1/8" or a bit more, and these are symmetrical hubs. I have never been able to determine why either.

Aaron

I have observed that the two "detection probes" on my Park Tool truing stand are not symmetric. When I'm building up a wheel I can't rely on it for getting the dish right, and I have to flip the wheel over many times as I go. I wonder how many other builders trust those probes unjustifiably. It's just a thought.

Yeah, I do the same, flip the wheel for validation because I don't have a high end truing stand. Which Park do you have [MENTION=121288]mim[/MENTION]muller? And is this why Park sells a dishing tool?

If it is a TS-2 or better, the caliper arms can be re-centered. If they are damaged, they can be replaced.

TS-2.2, the "Professional" stand. It's actually a nice piece, and flipping the wheel allows for very good dishing. I suppose I could "adjust" the probes by putting a file to the width mechanism (it couldn't hurt) but it hasn't seemed necessary.

Good to know. I'll have to look at it and see how.

I think that there is a lot of excellent advice and comments here. Still, here is my two cents worth:

Take all the stuff off the bike that’s tied on as ancillary stuff. So now you are “down to seeds and stems”. (Hahaha — just used to love the “Lost Planet Airmen” back in the Cretaceous.) Then do what I call the ‘Randyjawa frame test’. (Randy is a veteran member and owner of the “My ten Speeds” web-site.)

String the bike up on a horizontal plane: you string the rims, and hang the bike on a overhead horizontal plane. (Cuz I live in Japan, I use a laundry drying pole … only the super-rich use clothes dryers here).

Now, if the alignment is off, the head will swing this way or that. And it will be rather obvious as the ends of the bars will exaggerate the arc.

This at least gives you an idea of how bad your alignment is. If it is goes … WANG! … and whips around like a terrier on a rat, you know you have a significant issue. If it is like my Vitus, and just is always a "bit off" … IMHO … ignore it!

That being said, if I hang onto a pole at a red light with my shoes tight in the stirrup/clips … and then and let go of the bars, the head sometimes swings to the left, as indeed it does on the string-up. But, I can run a descent flat out in high gear — in traffic — and it is as steady as a rock.

I’ve strung up the Vitus in another way too — to check the alignment of the frame triangle. No problem. The big frame tubes are straight in relation to each other. But, in exception to my usual practice, I did not go to the frame maker to have the DO’s and stuff checked out. Usually, I string the frame, do some measurements with callipers, and then give the frame guy my numbers. I let him decide decide what is practical to correct and align. But I always insist on aligning the DO’s and tooling the head tube. Im my experience, the DO’s are ALWAYS out of alignment on an old frame. ALWAYS!

The Vitus is an epoxy, bonded frame. So I abandoned my usual practice. (My opinion — don’t ever torque on a vintage, bonded frame.) The wheels slide in and out like silk, so perhaps all is well. Still, that area is suspect. But, then again, I do know the bike had one crash in the mid 90’s that ended the racing career of the former owner. So, for reasons I will abridge here, I suspect the head tube may be very slightly off — but I can’t see it. And I’ve not yet been able to measure it — yet. (As with the DO's, it takes time and effort to check them, and I cannot change them anyway, due to the virtually unique nature of the frame assembly that was done by the French aerospace industry decades ago — 'Sud Aviation'?)

Over the years, I have finally managed to ride it for seconds with hands off, but I know that something is not perfect. What exactly? The wheels are perfectly centred and dished.They have been in the expert hands of an ex-racing mechanic. I’ve been setting hub bearings since I was 12 years old. The Mavic 310 competition headset is a very rare gem that I took infinite care with during my rebuilding process. So ….

THE FINAL ANSWER: AGE! Vintage bikes may have little tweaks and turds. We can obsess over them, but in the end we can accept them because all old machines — no matter what they are, be they bilkes, airplanes cars — have them. Get the basics right, and then just ride the bike — my heartfelt advice.


I have other old machines — take my Simplon/Romani: it hangs perfectly straight on a modern, Shimano factory wheel set. I let the frame maker pull and bend it around a bit before I built it up. Hands off … no problem. I love the thing. But riding my Vitus is just bloody marvellous. After a ride I relax in a deck chair, have a drink, and just stare at it in wonder.

i've had my fair share of this nonsense lately with my Gran Spot, turns out the drop outs weren't the same depth, pop open your quick release and see if your wheel has any slop in the dropouts.

It's in the instructions, and on their web site. Fairly simple to do. You need a perfectly dished wheel to properly adjust it, or a centering gauge(Park 1554-1).

My Univega with bar cons had a similar problem, and it was the derailleur cable housing. One housing was slightly longer than the other. Modern stiff housings will cause this more than the old flexible metal housings.

I have the Park TS-2.2 too, great stand. I also sprang for the centering gauge. I always check it before starting a wheel build or if I suspect something is off. I also have the Park Tool Wheel Alignment Gauge I use it for a quick check of already built wheels.

Aaron

This is where I'm at. Many potential causes have been suggested. I don't think there's a clear technique of root cause analysis for isolating the root cause, other than simply perfecting the ones that are easy, first. Compared to frame misalignment, checking wheel truing and dish is easy - a low cost dishing checker is adequate. I don't know what they cost now, but it has to be less than a full set of alignment measurement and leverage tools. Chances are the LBS will check dish for a 6-pack if you bring the wheels in with the skewers already out, ends wiped, and the cassette clean. Bring a pen and paper to write down what they say.

I've found dddd's discussion of fork blade alignment quite enlightening, but I would not attack it unless other causes had been eliminated. And one of the tools for testing fork and frame alignment is a pair of perfectly trued and dished wheels. A true and dished wheel fits in a perfectly aligned fork with the center of the tire perfectly in line with the steering axis. You need "perfected" wheels to test for an imperfect frame.

I think a stand is a repairing tool, where a dishing gauge is a checking tool.

[MENTION=28632]Road Fan[/MENTION] - I am sure you KNOW one is a repair tool and the other is a guage tool. Often we find that we can use the tool as a guage. Sometimes we use a guage as a repair tool, but hopefully NOT!

Thanks to the info here I got my truing stand straightened out last night. Also took the opportunity to fix the dish in the Centurion's wheels. I had bought them (Sanshin hubs, Araya rims, unknown brand SS spokes but with 14 gauge nipples) from someone on BF who promptly disappeared. As delivered they were not great, had mismatched skewers, mismatched bearing cones on the front so it was offset laterally. I'd done a half-hearted fixin' job, never noticed any pulling or tracking problem but haven't really pushed it hard all that much. Took it on my commute this morning and it rode great.

Of course none of this helps the OP with his pulling-to-the-right problem.

I did not try using the trying stand as a hammer, screwdriver, or wrench. It's just a bit to awkward for that.

If it was a Raleigh I would agree.

I'm not sure what Raleigh's you are referring to, but the one model's I have owned were fabulous.

Even If you center the arms with the Park alignment tool, it is only centered at 127mm(my Park tool) , the also have a marvelously inexpensive tool called a dishing tool . Flipping a wheel in the stand does not always do the trick in my limited experiments, I just use the correct tool and thereby do not have to wonder.

This front-wheel wheel dishing is a crucial first step as so many have mentoned.

If the dish is off by just 2mm, it can cause a noticeable pull toward the opposite side that the wheel is dished toward.

Although I was often disappointed by the brazing quality on early-1970's Raleighs, the ones that I found with dropout or alignment problems seemed to have been damaged in use.

What that isn't how everyone drinks their morning coffee? I wonder where I can get a big print of that.

What I know is I have a really early truing stand painted in Park blue, but no-name. It's better for truing than the bike frame/brake is, and it is nowhere near stable enough to flip a wheel and check dish. My old Minoura dish gauge is designed for nothing but to compare rim to axle distances on both sides. The only way I could use it as a repair tool is to wedge open paint cans or as a motorcycle tire iron.

I do wish I had a better stand, but this is fine, and I just don't touch up wheels very often - it's just my bikes, I don't take in any business.

The last time my bike felt off, the saddle rail had broken. Before that, a fork blade had cracked.

I confess I don't understand this comment. Perhaps more importantly, why should it be do, whatever it is it is saying?