I have been working for a while on a Takara conversion. Tonight for the first time I tried to put on a front wheel and could not get it to fit into the drops. I measured the inside the drop distance and it looks to be about 3.8mm where as all my other bikes are 4mm.

Does anyone know if Takara had some type of propritary axel diameter? Any ideas what I can do? I spent a lot of time prep'ing and painting this frame and really don't want to send it to the old frame pile.

Thanks and respectfully, fred

something isn't right with your measurement, 3mm is only about 1/8"....anyway, most front axles are 10mm diameter, but some are 9mm, maybe your fork is made for the smaller size.

Could it be a build up of paint on the dropout?
If the fork was paintied standing upright excess panit would gravitate to this area. I would CAREFULLY file back the inside of the drop out back to 4mm. Goodluck

Is it the axle into the dropout or the hub between the drop outs. ukuahb points out the axle diameters. The axle wide for front is pretty standard at 100mm. Is this a true keirin frame or just your normal Takara road bike? I know that on some Keirin bikes, the rear width is 110 and axle diameter is 8mm although I'm not sure about the front axle diameter.

something isn't right with your measurement, 3mm is only about 1/8"....anyway, most front axles are 10mm diameter, but some are 9mm, maybe your fork is made for the smaller size.

I may have misread my calipers when I said 3.8. It is just a hair smaller than the dropout width of all my other bikes so maybe this is a dropout for a 9mm vice a 10mm axel.

Should I try to find a 9mm axel or file/grind .5mm off either side of the dropout. It is a crome dropout so paint build up is not causing my problem.

The width of the fork arms is also small, but I was able to pry them apart a couple mm to get the wheel in. It is pretty heavy steel and I don't think this will harm the fork any.

It is just the actual dropout itself that is the big issue.