bluenote157

Dropouts are 120mm. The rear wheel was off of a cyclocross bike(i think) 700x30. Anyway, I removed the spacers to bring it down from 130mm to 126mm. I'm still not sure if i'm going fixed or SS yet. Since the rear wheel orginally had a freewheel on it, the lock nut on the drive side has a built in spacer/sleeve of about 20mm. For the sake of the chainline, does it make any sense for me to swap that drive side spacer with the non-side spacer (which would bring the cog/freewheel closer to the drop out)? If I do this, will it make the dishing process next to impossible and not worth it??

I guess the better thing is to do a trial and error on my part, but the bike is outside and the wheel is upstairs and I figure i'd ask.

thanks!

Re-Cycle

Yes, if you swap the spacers you will have to re dish. One alternative that sometimes works is putting spacers between the hub and the cog to bring the cog closer to your chainline. If that dosn't work then do the spacer swap and retish the wheel.

LóFarkas

After switching a 20mm spacer over, you might well need new spokes. The non-drive side spokes might (=probably will) bottom out/poke into the innertube, and there won't be enough threads holding the drive side ones. Once I rebuilt a ghetto wheel by switching the two spoke sets between the sides. It worked like a charm. (Drive side spokes are usually 1-2 mm shorter in dished multispeed rears). Incidentally, it was a loaned wheel so I had to tear it apart again and rebuild it like it was originally in 2 weeks' time... haha