> I wouldn't worry about it. A couple of years ago I upgraded on old Trek 1400 bonded aluminum frame
> from 7-speed to 8-speed. In spite of dire predictions from the doom-and-gloom crowd, snapping the
> 130mm hub into the 126mm spaced frame works just fine. As a "put my money where my mouth is"
> example, I took that bike to the Colorado Rockies last summer where I exceeded 40 mph on descents
> a number of times. The bike's still together.
On the 1400, you wouldn't likely have a problem with the chainstay/bb junction, but many have
snapped the brake bridge loose from the seatstays by spreading those frames. It (the brake bridge)
is held in place both by a pair of rivets and glue, and generally it's the rivets and interlocking
curvature of the pieces that does the work, so it's usually not a big deal aside from some buzzing.
But a blanket statement not to worry about it isn't appropriate here. Those frame tubes are *very*
rigid, so most of the stress from spreading the stays ends up at the brake bridge, which is trying
to keep those stays in the right place. Please note, however, that later 1400s were actually made
with 128mm spacing, to accommodate either 126mm or 130mm hubs.
--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
http://www.ChainReactionBicycles.com
"John Everett" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2003 21:13:23 +1000, John Stevenson <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >I have an old Raleigh Dynatech frame I'd like to press into service as a hack/commuter.
> >
> >It has steel tubes bonded into aluminium lugs, though the rear dropouts are brazed into the seat-
> >and chain-stays.
> >
> >It's currently spaced 126mm, and while I can fight a 130mm rear wheel into it, I don't want to
> >have to do that when I get a flat and I assume that the resultant non-parallelism of the dropouts
> >won't be good for the hub axle.
> >
> >So, the question: does the panel think such a frame can be safely bent to take a 130mm hub? If
> >so, how?
>
> I wouldn't worry about it. A couple of years ago I upgraded on old Trek 1400 bonded aluminum frame
> from 7-speed to 8-speed. In spite of dire predictions from the doom-and-gloom crowd, snapping the
> 130mm hub into the 126mm spaced frame works just fine. As a "put my money where my mouth is"
> example, I took that bike to the Colorado Rockies last summer where I exceeded 40 mph on descents
> a number of times. The bike's still together.
>
> I also did the trig a few years ago to see what moving a dropout 2mm did to the parallelism. As I
> recall (don't have the figures in front of me) the effect was negligible, probably well within the
> tolerances a frame builder would accept.
>
>
> jeverett3<AT>earthlink<DOT>net
http://home.earthlink.net/~jeverett3