Originally Posted by
freecycle
That immediately made me think of 24 inch rims with fat road tires. Brilliant!
I think it'd be up for the job but you'd have to move/replace the bridges in the rear triangle to retain the integrity. I think for a 'roady' conversion you might not need to (Track bikes don't always seem to need bridges) but on something that's gonna plug a bit of mud you'd want to have as much stiffness as possible.
Also - and I'm sure you've already thought of this - but the stays narrow as they taper to the seat tube so you may not be able to fit the fattest of tyres. I'd be looking to find the 24" equivalent of Cyclocross tyres - ie not madly fat but with the nobblies you need on the edges. Even if a fat tyre does fit there's the clearance it needs should it get clogged with mud/snow to factor in.
But I think it'd be a sweet conversion and a bit of a first - I've seen twentys that have bmx tyres that do the odd bit of gravel and trail riding - heck I've ridden trail on Stelvio slicks a couple of times, but a bigger wheeled twenty for touring and off-road would be a really interesting bike to see. I think Raleigh invented the Jeep of bike frames here in some ways - it can with the right parts be a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
