Skewer seems to long for rear dropouts

[BIGGCATT135]

okay so just recently i bought an old road bike. My friend gave me this extra wheel for it but it didn't fit on my bike.i have heard of there being spaces from the dropouts and the rear tire where you need to add spacers. but on my bike the skewer seemed to be a little bit to long for my rear dropouts. like i cant fit the rear wheel in at all. Also the gaps in the dropouts where you screw the wheel on seem to be to small to fit the skewer in. so do you think that the wheel is just to big for my bike?

sorry for my lack of bike terminology, and sorry if this is a dumb questions

[Painkiller]

lets see some pics of what you have and go from there

[ghost]

(04-14-2012, 06:55 AM)painkiller Wrote:  lets see some pics of what you have and go from there

Yes, it's a lot of questions that need photos to see what kind of problem this is. Give all the guys here something to work with.

[nfmisso]

(04-14-2012, 03:47 AM)BIGGCATT135 Wrote:  okay so just recently i bought an old road bike. My friend gave me this extra wheel for it but it didn't fit on my bike.i have heard of there being spaces from the dropouts and the rear tire where you need to add spacers. but on my bike the skewer seemed to be a little bit to long for my rear dropouts. like i cant fit the rear wheel in at all. Also the gaps in the dropouts where you screw the wheel on seem to be to small to fit the skewer in. so do you think that the wheel is just to big for my bike?

sorry for my lack of bike terminology, and sorry if this is a dumb questions

It sounds like the problem is O.L.D. :

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gloss_n-o.html#old

[Joe_W]

Also note that iff (if and only if) you have a steel frame it can be cold set to accept the wider rear wheel. To my knowledge cold setting was used to make final adjustments on steel frames anyway, so it can be done. The difference will be like 2-3mm on each side only anyway.