I am upgrading some parts on my wife’s bike and it seems like the lowest cog/highest chain ring combo rubs the seat stay. This seems to be there with 2 different 10 speed cassettes that I’ve used and is also present on a different wheelset as well. Wheels are true and dished as far as I am aware.
Bike is a 2009 bianchi volpe that originally came with shimano 9 speed. Trying to put on some campagnolo 10 speed parts on it now.
Were some frames not meant to handle higher speed cassettes (I.e., 9-> 10)?
byu/BroB-GYN inbikewrench
by BroB-GYN
6 Comments
odd. it should definitely be ok with a campy wheel. Is it a whole new wheel or did you just swap over the freehub and cassette?
When you rebuilt the hub with a new freehub body you may have shifted the drive side locknut a little too far in, so it isn’t standing off from the dropout quite enough?
2009 would be compatible with a 10sp drive train. Is it a 10 speed chain?
Yes, this can be a problem sometimes. The domed areas of the seatstays or chainstays can interfere with the chain while sitting on the smallest cog. It’s not necessarily that it’s not “meant” for Campy 10-speed, it’s just a quirk of how Campy 10 apparently locates the small cog a little closer to the plane of the locknut than Shimano 9 (or Shimano 10). You can see for yourself if you measure that distance on the two wheels. I first saw it in 2002 with a Merckx that someone bought a Record 10 group for shortly after it came out and the same problem was coming up as in your picture.
There is no super simple way of fixing this. You want to address it on the frame end, don’t screw around with making your wheels nonstandard. One solution would be figure out what distance you need to increase the gap by, remembering you do need some space for good measure (you want about 2mm total clearance everywhere). Then get or make some M10 washers in that thickness and epoxy or braze them to the inside of both dropouts, and cut the axle pathway back into them. Being a steel frame with flat dropouts, the dropout thickness won’t get excessive, i.e. it will wind up about the same as an aluminum frame is anyway. Then respace the rear triangle back to 130 and realign the dropouts, done. You’re doing both dropouts because you need to realign the back end after doing this no matter what, and doing so with asymmetrical dropout thickness gets weird (though you could only do one if you want).
In some iterations it’s possible you could run into this on an area of the stay(s) that could be crimped in, but usually it’s the dome area at the tips. You don’t want to mess around with removing or compressing material there, because that’s where the brazed joint with the dropout lives.
Are you sure you didn’t leave a spacer on from the 9 speed cassette. From what I remember, 9 speed needs a spacer and 10 speed doesn’t.
You can potentially remove the NDS axle spacer in place for a few smaller spacers with the same total lengh. Put 2mm or so of spacers between the drive side cone and lock nut and red dish the wheel. Would make the wheel slightly less strong because of the more extreme dishing