Building up my long awaited DB alpine and the rhs dropout is way too tight for the axle to slide in and out. It’s the longer dropout next to the derailleur hanger, the base is just about ok so the dropout is not quite parallel, can I bend it or should I try and file away some material? – not keen on trashing it obviously!

Any advice much appreciated

damaged frame -maybe in transit. I’d be returning it to get it sorted. even if its just a question of bending it out it needs to end in the right place or the mech hanger will be in te4h wrong place

Good sensible advice but it’s about 1mm we’re talking about and it’ll take forever to get it to DB and back. Could well be transit damage but triangles are ok and no marks…

email Mike and ask?

at the risk of sounding very foolish indeed, have you considered placing the frame flat on the ground, non-driveside down. Stand on the non-driveside plate end, and *gently* pull on the drive-side seatstay/ chainstay. If it’s only 1mm, it really shouldn’t need much…

get shop to do it then – they will have the tooling to make sure it all remains in alignment. If the mech hanger is out of alignment you will never get decent shifting

nicko74

That’s exactly the sort of idea I had in mind, plus a few variations, anyone done it??

I’m in the middle of nowhere and the local(ish) bike shops have never seen a decent bit of steel for decades so would rather do it myself if I can work out a safe-ish procedure. Understand that this is a five spanner rating on the hayes manual hardest to do scale!

Problem solved, 10mm drill bit and some careful but committed tapping did the trick!