Old bike from 1980s -- can you mount 700 x 25 wheels and tires?

[C5 Snowboarder]

Wondering if you can replace the wheels and tires on an old school bike with 27" x 1 1/4 tires with a 700 x 25 size wheels and tires.. What issues might I run into?

[chuckred]

I've had 700c x 25 on my old Paramount with no problem... just a slight adjustment of the brake pads. When I got the new rims, years ago, I wasn't even aware there had been a change.

[whitecda]

I just did this same project over winter with a Woodrup Giro-Touring frame from 1983. I went from a 7 sp rear to a 9. So the most major thing I had to do was spread the rear from 126mm or thereabouts, to 135mm to accommodate the updated wheelset/cluster. I'm still not sure it's completely/absolutely true, but good enough and I have 600 miles on it so far with no apparent scrubbing of the tires. But I'm watching that.

Anyhow, other than that I got long reach brakes, and am running 25mm Hutchinsons on Mavic A119 rims for now. I had no other issues, and replaced everything on the frame except the old Campy headset (still smooth as silk) and the downtube cable stops. I even used a road front end (STI's and Ultegra cranks and ft der) and a mountain rear end. (XT rear der and XTR 12-34 cluster). It all indexed up great and works very well.

Probbaly overkill for this old Reynolds 531 (i.e heavy) frameset, but well, it's been with me longer than my wife, and I just couldn't see tossing her out....the bike that is ;)

[vaxn8r]

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[cuda2k]

If you can move the brake pads down 4mm from where they are on the 27" wheel then you can make the change with no other modifications if the new wheel is spaced the same as the old one. If going with a newer wheel (8-10sp) you shouldn't have any problem spreading the rear dropouts as long as it's a steel frame.