[email protected] wrote:
> Hello,
> I would like to buy a new wheelset for my commuter. I found some nice
> wheelsets for sale on ebay for less than a hundred euros, but my bike
> has a rear spacing of 130mm instead of the now standard 135mm.
> Is it possible to respace a rear hub (say, Shimano Deore) from 135mm to
> 130mm? Is it possible to do so without re-dishing the wheel?
> Thanks,
> Federico Cozzi
Reducing the spacing on a current Deore or any other Shimano hub with a
large external contact seal on the left side won't work since the width
of the seal covers the entire distance between the left side of the hub
shell and the locknut, and then usually a bit further. The right side
locknut's protrusion from the cassette lockring generally won't give
you any room to spare there either (on almost all cassette hubs at
least, probably including all Shimano ones). Hubs with conventional
axles that don't have working "Parallax style" contact seals (ie, most
other cup and cone hubs, cup and cone hubs that have Parallaxy-looking
rubber chunks that do little or no actual sealing, and cartridge hubs
that use non-proprietary axles) can all be respaced down to 130. Some
cartridge hubs with shouldered axles with threaded ends would enable
this too, but AFAIK there aren't very many 135 hubs like that (and I
haven't done this). Another thing to watch out for with reducing the
spacing on 135 hubs is that some (not a lot but some) will have wider
flange-to-flange spacing then any 130 hub you'll find, meaning that
when you take 5mm off the left side, you'll have a wheel with worse
spoke tension disparity than the worst "130-native" hubs would give you
(since the left side flange will be abnormally close to the locknut).
Reducing spacing without re-dishing the wheel is only possible if you
can take equal amounts of space off both sides of the hub. Cassette
hubs don't give you adequate room to spare for this on the right side.
I assume that by naming 135 as "now standard" you mean to say your bike
is a 130-spaced MTB (130 is still the size for road hubs). If the bike
is a pretty typical steel 130-spaced MTB that actually measures 130 or
higher, just putting in the 135 hub is fine. If it's aluminum, it's a
bit more of a judgement call but it's still almost certainly fine. The
alignment of the derailer hanger is affected when one does this and
re-alignment for the new position is sometimes necessary. The main
potential issue with either of these IMO is if a bike already has poor
dropout alignment, which is never good but will be made just a bit
worse by cramming in the wider hub, potentially causing dropout or axle
failure eventually. Getting the dropout alignment checked and corrected
for its native spacing is a pretty good idea in these cases. Spreading
the frame is an option if it's steel, but it's not necessary if you
want to keep time and trouble to a minimum. One benefit of doing this
is that you can conveniently align the rear triangle perfectly at the
same time.
