rear wheel off-centre incorrectly dished

Couldn't find a thread dealing with this specific issue.

I was noticing a tendency on my road bike for it to track a bit awkwardly. It feels almost like it's leaning to the right and I have to compensate by moving my weight around. Handling also feels a little less than precise.

I looked at the rear wheel and it def looked like the tyre was closer to the rh chain stay. Took the tyre off and the rim was clearly closer, so it wasn't just a badly seated tyre. also, I put in a different wheel and that fitted fine, so it's not a frame alignment problem. However, after taking it to the lbs for redishing, the issue is still there. In fact, the wheel only seems to have move fractionally and is still closer to the rh stay by about 2-3mm.

Is that enough to be noticeable when riding, or is the handling issue caused by something else?

Wheel dish is easily measurable and on a properly built wheel shouldn't be an issue. If you've substituted another wheel that you know to be accurate, and that's fine, then it's probably a problem with the wheel rather than your frame. Perhaps it's been built with spokes that are too short on the drive side and too long on the non-drive side?

It actually doesn't take much of an adjustment to move the rim over from one side to the other so maybe the LBS did a ropey job? Hard to tell without measuring it. 2-3 mm offset is a fairly big error.

OK, looks like I'll have to take it back to the lbs. I'd do it myself but it's a mavic aksium and has bladed spokes and wasn't sure of how to keep the spokes in the right position - maybe it's not that hard though. cheers

It might be that they only twist a bit - at least you'll you'll be able to see them turn. It might be that, e.g., you back off the drive side spokes half a turn each (they shouldn't twist because you're easing the tension) and then tighten the non-drive side by half a turn and see where than gets you. On those, it might be that the spokes initially twist, say, a quarter turn, and then they start to tighten - so you carry on turning for half a turn, and then back the nipple wrench off a quarter turn to get rid of the twist that built up initially and restore the blade to the correct position. So it would be three quarters of a turn in the tightening direction and a quarter turn in the loosening direction = half a turn tighter.

I have some Aksiums but I've not had to true them yet so I don't know how the spokes behave. With light bladed spokes it does help to have a tool to hold them straight and resist the twist, like this one:

If I can use a tool like that and not have to guess at how much to over tighten and then loosen, that would be ideal. Although really, since I've paid for the thing to be dished, I shouldn't have to be spending hours with a spoke wrench...

Yeah, I agree. Shit LBS wheel truing jobs were the reason I decided to learn how to true and build wheels myself.

At least with bladed spokes you can see the twist so there shouldn't be any guesswork. But even on normal round spokes you can make a little "flag" using masking tape so you can see when they're twisting and how much.