Bike Anti-Porn - When Things Go Wrong

Some of those old steel road bikes were spaced 120mm, most were 126mm. Staying as a roadbike involves stuffing a 130mm hub into a space which wasn't designed to take it. I know you can spring it, or even get it cold set, but if I found a road frame with 120mm spacing and long slot dropouts, my first thought wouldn't be maintaining its spiritual purity by squeezing a cassette full of sprockets in there :-)

Who said anything about sticking a 130mm hub in there? If its 126 then it was designed for 6/7 speed cassettes so stick one of them instead. As you say you can 're-purpose' it to 8 or above speeds by stretching to 130mm if you so wished.

Likewise if its 120mm and was intended to be a road bike then stick a 5 speed or ultra-6 speed cassette in there. If its intended for a track hub (then it'd likely have track ends) by all means fit one of them.

Of course this is all in an ideal world where we all have the luxury of not having to use old geared road bikes as single speed road/track bikes. But as its not that world I don't have a problem with ppl doing it. Just saying it'd be nice if bikes were kept as their original purpose. Just a personal opinion though.

I say all this despite having recently considered respacing (by cold setting) a 531 Raleigh road frame I have to 120mm for a single speed project I had in mind. As I say its not a perfect world.
NB. For the record I've decided (for now) not to mess with the frame and just get a 126mm single speed hub (or put some spacers on a 120mm seeing as I have a few spares).