Hey everyone, I'm a bit stumped. When I'm going straight, it doesn't look like my handlebars and my front wheel line up. It's not that my handlebars are crooked. It looks like they're parallel. The wheel is just offset by a tiny bit. Why is that? And does this matter at all?
by jimBOYmeB0B
6 Comments
Stem and wheel not aligned?
I can’t see if it’s a disc brake, but with disc brakes the dishing of the wheel is set to one side to allow space for the disc.
Not enough pics to work with. A few considerations: wheel not centred in the fork; wheel hub centred in fork but wheel dish is off; fork/frame headtube/stem bent; quill not square in the headset; a combination of the above…
Does the bike track straight when riding no-hands?
it could be a wheel dishing issue as well, i’d check if the wheel is aligned centered in the fork first. it’s also worth reseating your quick release in the dropouts
Are you sure your head wasn’t a bit to the left when you took this? Lol
Your wheel might be flipped if it’s asymmetrically sitting on its axle (if you have thru hub or disc brakes then it’s not this).
If it’s not that you could put the wheel on a make shift truing stand to make sure it’s not dished.
While it’s up there, you could sight your forks to make sure everything is aligned (Id put a piece of tape or something across the dropouts and mark its center, then sight from above like you’re doing now to see if the midline of the forks aligns witht the stem/head tube.
It could just be parallax error in the photo.
Unless the center of the camera lens is precisely over the centerline of the frame, things further away than the top tube (like the wheel) will appear to be offset towards the side of the frame the center of the lens is on, and things closer than the top tube (like the top of your stem) will look offset to the other side. The greater the distance from the reference, the more the offer appears to be.
I notice that the center of your stem bolt is slightly to the left of the center of the top tube.
I bet the camera on your phone isn’t in the center of the phone.