For a few reasons I need to move my rear wheel backwards in my horizontal dropouts. Are there any weird ‘Black art’ rules … like you can’t move it past the axis of the front pulley (Red line). The axle usually sat in front of everything (green line), but I’d like to move it pretty far back (purple line). Anything wrong with this?
Random question I know…but I seem to remember something from the great s.brown along these lines.
i don’t think it would be a problem, in theory.
a few things to be careful of:
chain length might be slightly different (one link?). this could affect your ability to shift into your biggest cog (possibly not, though).
be very careful about wheel alignment. if you don’t have set screws in the dropouts (i don’t see any), then you don’t have the back of the dropouts to ensure that the axle is perpendicular to the front-rear axis of the bike. then you could have brake rub, shifting problems, and possibly others.
good luck,
I think if it were a much bigger shift it could be an issue, but what you’re showing seems to be well within the normal range of fore-aft swing as the RD pivots to maintain chain tension. You might back off the B-tension screw a tad to compensate if you don’t add a link, since moving the wheel rearward will increase the baseline pull on the chain somewhat.
If that bike has a chainstay mounted brake, which I bet it does, you may have some problems when you move the wheel back with the pads being too “high” on the wheel, not lining up with the brake surface of your rim.
Thanks for the reply. The bike has never been built up, so the chain length, brake pads, etc. will all be dealt with later.
RE the alignment… the length I’m moving it back is too far for any set screws, so I’m making custom spacers to glue in there.