Front wheel fork clearance
 

I just bought a new front wheel online and it arrived today. I mounted the wheel in the fork but the wheel rubs the top of the fork in one spot to the point that it gets stuck there(usually there is a couple of mm clearance, quite tight). It's supposed to take a 700c which is what I have on it right now so its not a 700c/27" size issue. Is the wheel just out of round and would a trueing fix this?

Thanks.

yeah, out O round !

just put the wheel on til it doesn't touches it fork crown.

S/F,
CEYA!

Could be the tire. I had a cheap Michelin that rubbed my fork crown when other tires (Vittoria, Dillios, etc) did not. I bought the offending rubber from Performance, who gladly exchanged it.

I've heard rumors that they sometimes sell B-stock tires that aren't as round as they should be. No idea if that's true.

You'll feel the hop every revolution of the wheel. Just true it.

Scrapppppeerrrrr Bikkkeeeeee

YESSSS!



narrower tire...maybe a 19mm

what fork is it?

I have a similar problem going on right now, I had a flat this morning and no time to fix it so I snagged the wheel off my GF's bike, its a 27" and I had to set it low in the fork ends to keep it from rubbing, then on my way to work I hit a pothole and it slammed the tire back against the crown, so I had to stop and move it again, its pretty ghetto,but it looks sweet with like a 1/2mm of clearence.

is the hop in the wheel near the seam?

Anyone have any other ideas? The place I bought it from sent me a second one, still no dice, and I brought it to the LBS to get rounded. It came back and its still sticking. Could it be the tires? The ones I have are quite old.

If you are using the correct combination of rim, tire, and fork, you ought to have more than an inch of clearance on each side of the tire, and more than an inch above the tire. A rim would have to be VERY badly out of round, or out of true for the rim to be the cause.

Lots of folks try to use less clearance, but then mud will clog up the clearance, or a stick or road debris will get wedged between the tire and the fork...and that makes for a trip to the ER.

If you have less clearance than that, you need a different size of tire, or a different fork.

Are you ********? Have you even seen a track bike before? Seriously, I think you need to consider what you're saying before you visit SSFG again. An inch or more above and around the tire is what I call a waste of space.

***harsh***
maybe not

I bought a used KHS fork for my girlfriend's bike and we had the same problem. I couldn't figure it out... tire was 23mm wide, wheel was a true 700c. For the wheel to fit, we would have had to be running a 20mm tire, but I wasn't going to do that. Thankfully, her father is a machinist, so we just dropped it off with him and he enlarged the arch in the crown.

"Rivendell Reader" did a fascinating article on fork design. They showed good forks from three decades ago, two decades ago, and some 2005 model forks.

What the article showed was that fork designers traditionally left at least an inch of space around the tire that would be used with that fork. That enabled bike owners to use a wider rim, use a wider tire, have plenty of mud clearance, and have plenty of clearance for sticks and other road debris that might get wedged between the fork and the tire. For example, a well designed fork for a road bike allowed the owner to use 23mm tires, or use 32mm tires. Virtually NO "popular" road bike fork in 2007 allows the use of both, in fact, many "rub" on a 28mm" tire. This problem has infected every part of the bike industry.

Year by year, fork designers have reduced clearances, so that by 2005, some forks had essentially NO clearance. The rim needed to be perfectly true, and the bike owner must use a tire narrow enough to clear the rim. If anything goes wrong (a spoke snaps, the wheel goes out of true, mud clogs up the tire, debris wedges into the fork) the rider has problems.

The fact that "all" the bikes some 19 year old rider has ever owned had "tight" forks does not mean that tight fork clearances are "correct". It simply means he is too young to have owned a bike with a properly designed fork.

By the way, SOME designers still design proper forks. Of course, the designers at Rivendell are among them. If YOUR fork is rubbing against the tire, don't assume you have a "wonderful" fork. Cheaper to buy a new fork than to take a trip to the ER.

Igneus Faction, the fork I have is a KHS as well. It's one of the older Aero Tracks.

Hey, Grant Peterson, thanks for the lesson. You have seen a track bike before, right? They're the ones without the 8 inches of Technomic stem or the canvas bags hanging all over them.

Three decades ago:

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u...own-250x18.jpg

http://www.rivbike.com/images/QBforkcrown_sm.jpg

Uhhhhhh.............. That's not 1".

This came off a road bike from the same era as the Aero tracks, but I imagine it's similar. It was a CrMo unicrown. I began to wonder if perhaps it was designed for a 650, because I couldn't understand the clearance issuse. Either get a thinner tire or do like we did and grind it down. I believe her father took off 2mm from the crown. Make sure you don't grind into the welds. Good luck!

Also, who the hell put bees in everyone's bonnet? Chill out, losers. You can argue about what clearances are appropriate for "track bikes" all night, but the OP's fork has NO clearance. Aesthetically pleasing, perhaps; but definitely not functional.

Yahtzee. I just put a 700x20 tire on there and its all good. Thanks everyone for the help.

How much do you weigh?

I have been through this , it is the tire.

S/F,
CEYA!