Speccing a rear wheel - trainer duties

[Captain Raymond Holt]

Afternoon all,

For quite a while my roadie has been relegated to turbo duties. What I’m mulling over now is selling it and sourcing a rear wheel (inc cassette) which I can then put on the gravel bike for turbo use, swapping the gravel wheel back for when I venture outside.

However... is it as simple as that? Do I need to be careful re hub widths (or something?)

Current gravel bike wheel is a WTB ST i21 TCS 700c rim on a Novatec hub, 32H 5 sealed bearing 12 x 142mm, Shimano HG700 11 speed 11-34T cassette.

Ta,

[louiebaby]

If your "real" hub and cassette and your "turbo" hub and cassette are the same, it should be as simple as you'd hope, because if the gears are indexed on one, they'll be indexed on the other.

You may be able to have a different cassette, but may fall foul of having the chain be too long on one of them. You may not.

If you're running discs, you may want a disc on your "turbo" wheel to stop it when it's on the turbo, or alternatively put a plastic plug in the brake calliper when on the turbo, so you don't do any damage if you hit the brakes with no disc in place.

[ESDavey]

I bought a basic Shimano wheel, cassette and added a turbo specific tyre. I then simply swap wheels when i want to ride outside.

Main thing is to get the cassette the same (ie shimano 11 speed). If the number of cogs are the same, the indexing will be fine and so will your chain.