OK, since so many are jumping all over my suggestion for dual pivot brakes here goes....

Granted I don't know what the original Diacompes felt like with 27's but if you're all saying that the change was minimal then I shudder at the lack of braking power they had when new with the original 27's, let alone with even a slight increase in reach to accomadate the 700c's. If ANY of you think that these were adequite then I have to politely suggest that you've were brainwashed. The old single pivot calipers SUCK, pure and simple. And particularly in the wet. And since I was commuting on them and there's no lack of "wet" around these parts I was ecstatic with the new dual pivot performance.

Again, I state that by far the best upgrade I did to my two bikes that originally had single pivot older calipers was to change over to the Tektro dual pivot models. I did not get a chance to ride either with the OEM 27's so I guess I assumed that the poor brake performance was due to the reach difference.

Anyway, back to our original topic.....

As Pinyon suggests some creative tweaking of the frame will be needed to adapt this bike to newer hubs. www.sheldonbrown.com (may his soul ride on forever over through the finest of country and smoothest of roads) has an article somewhere about how to cold set these old venerable frames to fit the new hubs. Or if you shop around long enough there's still some nice 7 speed cassette adn freehub stuff to be had. If you find them and lace them up to some new rims you won't need to do anything to your frame.

Speaking of tires Continental makes a 27x1 in their budget priced Ultra Sport line. I've used some of them in the 700c size and can say that they roll as well or better than a lot of the higher priced tires I've tried over the years. If you can source a pair you will not be dissapointed and I'd have no concerns that racing with them will invovle any sort of significant handicap.