Touring - Rims and tyres, knees and toes, knees and toes

This may seem a little niave but if a bike comes with 27 inch wheels fitted would it be poss to put on 26 inch wheels. Also what do you know about continental top touring tyres could you do alittle off road with them , nothing too major mind.
If you cant put 26 inch wheels on the bike does any one know the availablity of 27inch in Latin Am. Thanks in advance are the Mavic t221 any good
Take care all

Dub-

I answered some of your questions in my eXp thread but to further suggest info... goto the SJS Cycles website(Thorn)and read up on their comparison of tires(tyres, in your neck of the woods)as well as quite a bit of rim info as well.

I am guessing that Robin Thorn will tell you flat out... "No." to your thinking on placing 26 inchers on a bike setup for 27's.

And yes, Mav's T221's are quite good as are Sun Rhyno's for touring.

I have seen tinkertype people put 26" wheels on older touring/sport touring bicycles that origianlly took 27" wheels. The big problem with doing this though is brake reach. There is a significant difference in length between 700c/27" wheel in comparsion to 26" wheels.
But if you do some searching you can find oldschool BMX brakes like the DiaCompe Bulldog that has super long reach. I never tried this, but it sounds like it would work. I am tempted to try it myself one of these days.

I have to stress that this conversion is best with older touring bicycles of the 70's and 80's since they had plenty of tire clearance for phat tires. Still, even if you can put 26" tire wheel on, you would still need to put relatively thinner tire like 26" x 1 or 26" x 1.25.

Another option would be to have a local frame builder braze on Cantilever Bosses to the front and back and adjust the canti's to the 26" rims.

4130phile

If you plan on touring in latin america with 27 inch tires, plan on not coming across too much. You will probably find stuff in capital cities, save countries like tegucigalpa and nicaragua. I was touring with a guy with 27 inch tires through most of C. America and he had back up tires and tubes up the yin yang, where I could get a replacement rim anywhere (be it cheapy chineese), tires anywhere (same quality), and tubes. I don't think he broke one spoke while we cycled together where I broke countless. It might of had to do with weight distribution over the back, or could have been spoke count.
I think 36 spoke rims are the way to go and if you are going south of the border, pay up for quality and don't be trying to cut on weight, you'll be strong enough to pull cars after a month anyway.

Dave