Unfortunately no, there’s no part missing. With this kind of dropout you just have to kinda hold the wheel centered while you do up the left-hand nut. It gets easier with practise.
nateknutson on
The thing you’re thinking of is most commonly called a “dropout spacer” to my awareness, see [https://www.ebay.com/itm/374538821701](https://www.ebay.com/itm/374538821701) for an example. If you really want to, it is possible to use these on a bike like yours to allow for automatic or closer-to-automatic recentering of the wheel. The way you would achieve that is install it all the way back in the left dropout, then install the wheel, then manually eyeball it into center, then after you’ve got that dialed manually you can scootch the spacer forward until it’s contacting the axle in the NDS dropout. Then, in theory, for future wheel removals and reinstallation you’re just slamming it back and tightening and it should recenter.
The above only works if there’s room to do that scootching, either as-is or by taking material off it. There won’t always be.
2 Comments
Unfortunately no, there’s no part missing. With this kind of dropout you just have to kinda hold the wheel centered while you do up the left-hand nut. It gets easier with practise.
The thing you’re thinking of is most commonly called a “dropout spacer” to my awareness, see [https://www.ebay.com/itm/374538821701](https://www.ebay.com/itm/374538821701) for an example. If you really want to, it is possible to use these on a bike like yours to allow for automatic or closer-to-automatic recentering of the wheel. The way you would achieve that is install it all the way back in the left dropout, then install the wheel, then manually eyeball it into center, then after you’ve got that dialed manually you can scootch the spacer forward until it’s contacting the axle in the NDS dropout. Then, in theory, for future wheel removals and reinstallation you’re just slamming it back and tightening and it should recenter.
The above only works if there’s room to do that scootching, either as-is or by taking material off it. There won’t always be.