Respacing Miche Primato hub to 130mm. Or not.

I've finally finished my first build (photos to follow), for which I must say thanks to pretty much everyone on the forum for all the wisdom on these pages. And for parts of course ;-) Polybikeuser for the wheelset and Flatlander for the chainring...altho I'm using a different chainring, cos I swapped that one for a cog from Lebowski.
Got a few snags to tidy up tho....the main one is the spacing of my rear hub. Its a lovely smooth Miche Primato high flange but its OLN is 120mm, and the drop outs on my Peugeot are 130.
At the moment I'm 'spacing' it by tightening up the nuts that extra 5mm either side, but its a bit fiddly, and I know that the first time I get a puncture it'll be 3 am, I'll be drunk, and it'll probably be snowing. So I'd like to get it spaced, and a wider axle put in to make my life a little easier.
I've called around most of the shops I can think of, and the responses have either been that they can't do it, or I should call Condor. Condor said they can't do it either. Something to do with the sealed bearings and it being really difficult to get hold of Miche parts for hubs.
Does anyone know if there is a way around this?

Thanks again.

Jon

Aside from the arse killing saddle, and the slightly short seat post (stem-style so I'm guessing difficult to find longer ones), she rides beautifully. I've been taking lots of detours and offering to pick things up for people this week! Here she is.

dime a dozen pug, just slowly squeeze in the rear to 120mm ;)

Yeah but its a pain doing that every time you have to take the wheel out...there must be a way!

i meant permanently!

its not that hard even.

Aah. Now that I did not know. This must be the mythical art of 'cold setting' you are reffering to.

'opens new tab to check wikipedia'

Should really have looked here first...

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/frame-spacing.html

I'd cold space it - it's a piece of piss as long as you take it easy and check alignment. Respacing cartridge bearing hubs is quite difficult because you need a special axle with a thicker central section to fit the hub, rather than just a uniform width threaded axle. Given that Miche hubs use Italian threading you'd be very lucky to find one and your best bet would be to get one custom machined.

I'd cold space it - it's a piece of piss as long as you take it easy and check alignment.
so when you're jumping on the rear stays, just do it gently ;)

Forgive my ignorance, but does that mean just slowly bending the dropouts in until they are 120 apart? Cos thats pretty much what I'm doing when I put the wheel on...and when I remove the wheel it reverts to 130. Sheldon talks a lot about widening, but not so much on the narrowing. Does it just need to be done reeeeeally slowly?

Thanks for explaining the cartridge bearing hub thing Momentum, that makes sense now. Hopefully cold spacing the rear stays will be easier than getting as custom made axle!

when you do it up, you're just pulling to 120. to make it stay at 120, you need to bend it in further with no wheel ;). do it slowly and do it on both sides. as i mentioned jokingly before, i stand on the stays (you'd be suprised how strong they are), but i've done it a few times before. the key is once you feel any movement stop and check immediately.

For a slightly more controllable bend than dogs' way then get a long bit of tough wood (I used a broom handle on a cheap frame, higher quality steel might need more leverage) and thread it from the outside of the dropout, through one side of the rear triangle and then brace the end on the seat tube. I can't tell whether this makes any sense, but it's dead obvious when you think that the idea is to lever off the seat tube to push the dropout inwards. It's also the same as what sheldon explains, just pushing in not out.

Get someone to hold tight on the frame and lever it in a bit. Keep measuring the dropout spacing and push one side in by 5mm, then the other side. Once this is done then the dropouts won't be quite parallel so use a vice/big pair of mole grips/fat adjustable etc to tweak them out a little so that they're parallel. Then use the string method to make sure everthing is straight and symmetrical, slot your wheel in and ride off into the sunset!

yeah i lie the frame flat on the ground and stand in the middle below the brake bridge. as i said, i've done it before, so know what to look out for. i also prefer this way as it doesn't put any stress or potential damage a seat post.

Both those explanations make a lot of sense to me, thanks fellas. Think I might use the broomstick method though! Its Reynolds 501 on a mid-eighties Peugeot, so I think its pretty decent, but I'll play it by ear, take it slowly and see what happens.
Here's hoping my next thread isn't titled 'Anyone know how to reweld a snapped off rear stay?'
;-)

edit: good point on stressing the seatpost. Hmmm some kind of hybrid method might be called for.

My main worry would be putting a ding in the seat tube - maybe tape some flat bits of wood to the sides of the seat tube so there is no single pressure point. I wouldn't worry about the general amount of force going into the seat tube. Framebuilders do a lot worse when they're aligning frames and bike frames come under a lot of force in normal use so they're pretty strong.

The axle on the Miche hub is quite long, so that you can simply put two 5mm spacers on each side to use on a 130mm frame

I usually do it on converted frames

The axle on the Miche hub is quite long, so that you can simply put two 5mm spacers on each side to use on a 130mm frame

I usually do it on converted frames

I'll definitely give that a go before anything else, cheers mate. I guess even 3 or 4 mm of spacers would make things easier too.

I'll definitely give that a go before anything else, cheers mate. I guess even 3 or 4 mm of spacers would make things easier too.

M10 stainless washers are a good bet for this, you will need cone spanners to fit them but its easy enough.

Sorry I know this is an old thread but, can you respace the actual miche hubs to 130? are the axels long enough to take spacers??

shit just read further, and saw the answer to my question, teach me to read the whole thing!

I just did this this weekend with some Condor Uno hubs. Axles not as long as I'd like and bolts only just over half way on but seems solid.

Anyway I have a bunch of spacers surplus to requirements. if anyone else needs any give me a shout.

I'd cold space it - it's a piece of piss as long as you take it easy and check alignment. Respacing cartridge bearing hubs is quite difficult because you need a special axle with a thicker central section to fit the hub, rather than just a uniform width threaded axle. Given that Miche hubs use Italian threading you'd be very lucky to find one and your best bet would be to get one custom machined.

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I'm wondering about this point because I've got an old MTB with a cartridge-bearing rear axle I'd like to respace for a BMX sprocket. Are all cartridge-bearing hubs impossible to respace without replacing the axle? I've searched around with google and there are very few references to it. Even Sheldon's silent on it, so I thought I'd post on here.

Ben

Ignore me, question has become irrelevant (the hub I was talking about turned out to be a funny looking cup-and-cone when I took it to bits)