Rear axle spacing

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curzons246

Veteran
Location
derbyshire
My frame is Reynolds 531c. 130mm spacing at the rear. Drive chain is Shimano derailiuer system. My rear wheel is 126mm By adjusting the Quick release it all works well enough so I should leave alone but I've got my hands on a 130mm shimano rear hub and was thinking about moving the 4mm spacer and even the axle if needed to make my 126 wheel 130. Is it that easy or will the rim be off centre and need re dishing?
 

Ajax Bay

Guru
Location
East Devon
If you really want to do this (and much better for the frame to have an OLN hub of 130mm if the dropouts are 130mm apart) then use the axle from the new hub and separately get two 2mm spacers, and put them one each side to preserve the wheel centred in the frame. This will push your chainline in 2mm at the back, but that is not significant (less than half a sprocket pitch) - RD will need reindexing of course - take special care to limit the cage movement outwards. May need slight FD adjustment to cater for the new chainline. If you just put the 4mm spacer on one side, the wheel will still turn and be rideable, but would be 2mm out and would benefit from re-dishing. If your clearances (eg to mudguards) are small there may be fouling without re-dishing.

Worth reading Sheldon's article on frame spacing from which I quote:
"Typical quick-release axles are 11 or 12 mm longer than the spacing of the hub locknuts. This gives 5.5-6 mm of axle protrusion on each side. You don't actually need nearly this much, so for respacing hubs to wider spacing, if you're not adding more than, say, 5-6 mm of spacers, you don't need a new axle. As long as you have 2 or 3 mm sticking out on each side, that's plenty."
So maybe you could just add 2 x 2mm spacers to your current axle. It's the compression of the QR that holds the axle in place in the dropouts.
 
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