Originally Posted by
zukahn1
After having built a few bikes recently that had 27 inch wheels originally with both 27's and 700c's. I have come to the thinking that on a lot of C&V bikes just ride better with the original correct size wheels and tires exspecially if you can keep close to the original gearing. Fooling around with different setups I have ridden both of my current C&V bikes a 620 Jeunet and 64 Gitane with both nicer 27 inch alloys and correct size 1 1/4 tires and nicer 700c with good modern 25 tires. Both bikes ride significantly better with the correct size 27s. Neither does a good job of tracking riding no hands with 700's yet both track good to great with the correct 27's. I wanted to find out if people here agree or disagree with this?
The difference between the wheels is 8mm, that is just over 1% of the total wheel diameter, that's not likely to make much difference, but there are other factors that can make a huge difference, the first is the tire, a 25mm wide tire is only 80% of the width of a 1 1/4" wide tire (~32mm), it's likely to be at a much higher pressure as well. The actual wheel build, different rims, different spokes, different hubs, possibly low vs. high flange hubs.
I ditched the 27" wheels and don't miss them, one of the issues with 27" wheels is tires, there seem to only be 2 or 3 tires available in 27", either the cheapest you can find or the most expensive you can find,