n00b time - track and road wheels

What's the difference? (Apart from the cassette on the rear road). Are track and road front wheels the same essentially? I bought a HED3 off ebay and it feels a bit tight on my forks.

Also, can you change the axle out of road wheels to make them track?

Cheers. I anticipate and welcome the inevitable barrage of lampooning and abuse, but please provide solid information. I've learnt my lesson after trying in vain to purchase gooch cream on a forum member's recommendation and I haven't spent enough time on here to recognise all the in-jokes yet.

road rear and track rear
are completely different as one will have a freehub body and a cassette
and the other has a track cog and lockring
the front should be the same but front end spacing could differ but is unlikely

last caress

the front should be nigh on identical

rears will take a bit more effort

reat track is usually 120mm rear road is 126mm spacing frames can be squeezed / expanded to accomodate if they are steel

rear road will also be non symetrical as there is more axle on one side than the other to accomodate the cogs thus it will beslightly out of line if you put a road wheel in a track frame

chamois creme is real!

or were you directed to ask for something else?

One is "dished" and the other is not.

In other words, the non-track wheel has uneven (shorter) spokes on the non-sprocket side, and they're of even length on both sides of a track wheel.

But of course your question was nearly inevitably a wind-up? Therefore I've been quite silly in answering. Oh well......

gogosama - Oh yeah, you're right.

dicki - that's comforting. I'll start actually riding it and not just fondling it in my lounge as I am at the moment then!

mattty - That's going to be more comforting. Me and my raw undercarriage thank you

GA2G - I can picture it now and realise my mistake. But I assume if I buy a deep carbon rim set up for road, then I can rebuild it around a track hub without too much hassle? And no, it's not a wind up and I'm grateful for your help.

track wheels are also made to be stiffer than road wheels, especially the carbon jobbies.

I bought a HED3 off ebay and it feels a bit tight on my forks.

Best thing to do is sell it to me. Sounds far too dangerous for your bike and I would be more than happy to help you out. I worry about your safety :)

Rims are pretty much the same for track and for road- lack of a braking surface is the main difference between them.

Front hubs are the same spacing (100mm), but road hubs will have a quick release, track hubs will be tightened onto the dropouts with nuts.

Rear hubs are very different- track hubs have no freewheel assembly for obvious reasons.

Spacing- a modern road bike hub will be 130mm, a track hub 120mm.

You could swap a road hub for a track hub, but by the time you have bought spokes, got it laced and trued etd you'd probably have been better off flogging the road wheel and buying a track wheel.

Fronts are pretty much interchangeable

As mentioned above a road hub will have to accomadate a stack of 10 cogs, so the wheel will not be symetrical in terms of spoke length, a track hub should be symetrical.

If converting a road wheel to singlespeed you can just put a single cog on the freehub body, Surly make a kit for this but you can DIY with spacers. Chainline (a straight line from chain-ring to sprocket) may take a bit of juggling to achieve.