Saving for my next bike and I am looking at the Cotic X (seen as it has rack mounts, lovely and steel, canti and disc bosses) for the versatility and future proofness of the bike. Currently my cross bike is a 130 spaced bike and I have 3 whole wheelsets and a separate rear wheel for the turbo so based on the amount of wheels I have I want them to be compatible.

I am planning on running it singlespeed for the time being anyway so would there be any problem in using some ally/steel spacers of 2.5mm either side and then adjusting the chain line accordingly for the spacers seen as re-dishing wouldn’t be viable every time I changed the wheels from bike to bike.

I’d email Cy @ cotic and ask what he thinks.

With a steel frame it may be possible to have the stays reset to 130 rather than faffing about with spacers.

I’ve just put together an old alu Kinesis Crosslight, which has 135 spacing. Managed to simply use the QR to pull the frame in onto a 130 rear wheel – works fine.

I’d imagine a steel frame is even less of an issue…

so would there be any problem in using some ally/steel spacers of 2.5mm either side and then adjusting the chain line accordingly for the spacers

Only gotcha would be that the mech could reach the largest cog on the block. It can probably cope with 2.5mm difference, so crack on.

would there be any problem in using some ally/steel spacers of 2.5mm either side

I’d say so – look at how thick your dropouts are and how much of the axle they actually cover (i.e. how much of the axle protrudes beyond the locknuts – not a lot). Now remove 2,5mm from each end…

Unless you can replace the axles with longer ones (shouldn’t be a problem on Shimano/other cup-and-cone bearing hubs) then you should be OK, otherwise I’d be looking at getting the frame spaced properly.

FWIW, My VN Amazon has 132.5mm dropouts so it can take either “standard”. It’s titanium and I don’t know if that makes a difference to how flexible that makes it compared to steel.

Think the Roadrat is 132.5 so can go both ways?
But 130 in a 135 hole, or vice versa, might be pushing things a bit far.
If the dropout plates are sufficiently misaligned, then snapped axles is a side effect. Bin there dun that a few times on my olde worlde Peugeot road bike.
If I did either, I think I’d prefer wider wheel in a narrower hole and splay the dropouts a bit, rather than use tension of the skewer to hold it all together.