doug wiens

I have a late 80s Concorde, with a 2x7 drivetrain. The front wheel is a bladed Mavic Elite taken from another bike when its rear wheel broke. I'd like to put a matching bladed rear wheel on the Concorde, preferably another Mavic Elite, but have read that this drivetrain/wheel might not match. Any advice here?

Steve B.

Some 7 speed is freewheel, which screws on to the hub, some are cassettes, which slide on to a keyed hub. They are not compatible. If you have a freewheel hub, it's a good luck scenarios finding the wheel as this stuff is easily 30 years old. Newer cassette hubs are 7-8-9-10-11 speed and can be made to work with a 7 speed cassette, thus greater selection of wheels.

70sSanO

To cut to the chase…

Some late 80’s bikes were made with the dropouts at 128mm. This would allow the use of a standard 7 speed freewheel or cassette at 126mm or an 8 speed cassette freehub at 130mm.

You can run a 7 speed on an 8+ speed freehub with a spacer behind the cassette.

I only bring this up as I don’t recall (but may have existed) a pre-90’s Mavic Elite bladed, or any bladed, wheelset and you will probably have to go with a newer rear wheel that will be 130mm.

John

Edit: Removed Cannondale reference since I read OP’s post without my brain engaged. Since I believe the bike is steel you can cold set it to 130mm.

ThermionicScott 

Nothing stopping you from building a rear wheel with a freewheel hub and bladed spokes*.

(*By which I mean, something like Sapim CX-Rays that aren't super wide. As 70sSanO reminds me, some of the wide spokes need the right hub to accommodate them...)

70sSanO

I did a quick search and it seems that in the mid-80’s they began being used for TT’s.

To add to ThehmioniacScott’s post, early renditions required the hub holes to be slotted for the blade to be installed through the hub. There were also some with an S bend.

1987 seems to be the year the general public got access to large quantities, and Wheelsmith was a big player.

Interesting stuff.

John

ShannonM

As has been said, the only rear wheels that are going to look right with that Mavic front are going to have 130mm cassette hubs.

This actually presents no problems at all.

1) Going from 126mm to 130 on a steel frame doesn't even require cold setting. A quick tug on the seatstay and the wheel pops right in.

2) 7-speed cassettes fit 8-speed hubs... they even come with the little plastic spacer. 8-speed cassettes almost always fit. You end up running the chain pretty close to the right-side dropout, but it's very unusual for there to be interference problems with skinny steel seatstays.

3) If the bike has an indexed 7-speed Shimano drivetrain, you can use 8-speed cassetes and you don't even need new shift levers. Set the drivetrain up so that the 1st click on the lever indexes the 2nd cog and set the low limit screw so that the chain runs centered on the 1st cog. You use the 1st-gear overtravel that Shimano built into their levers to friction shift the 1st cog, and the other 7 are indexed. You do give up the ability to make bailout downshifts under load. (That's why the overshift is there, and you're using it to make normal shifting work.) It sounds wonky, and it is, and it's a bit fiddly to set up, but it totally works. I had my mountain bike set up this way for years, because I despise under-bar shifters, but I was way too broke to afford Paul's Thumbies and 8-speed Ultegra barcons so I used 7-speed Deore XT thumbshifters.

--Shannon

canklecat

I've done pretty much what ShannonM described to run older 1980s wheelset with freewheels on a 1993 carbon fiber bike intended for cassette wheels and slightly wider hubs; and vice versa, newer wheelsets with wider hubs on my older steel bike. Luckily the wheels were properly aligned and centered so I didn't need to redish the wheels on my road bikes. While it's not a great practice to use a narrower hub wheelset in a carbon fiber bike, using the quick release to squeeze the forks and rear of the frame to close the slight gap, it caused no problems for my bike in over a year and thousands of miles of riding.

In some cases if the wheel is off center, we can center it by tweaking the position of the axle within the locknuts -- as long as the ends of the axle make adequate contact in the dropouts. In other cases we'd need to re-dish the wheel by adjusting the spokes.

However I did need to re-dish the rear wheel on another set for my early 1990s Univega hybrid to center the rear wheel. It ran okay off-center but it looked like a dog with a hitch in its gitalong, with its rear end trying to overtake its front end. After dishing it's run fine for three years.

Homebrew01

All my vintage bikes, including Cannondale have 130mm wheels "jammed" in the frame so I can use 10 speed cassettes & modern shifters. Vastly expands the range of wheels available.
With steel frames, you can also do it the right way and "cold set" (bend) the rear dropouts wider to 130 mm.