Originally Posted by dnomel

I had an old gitane tdf, and an old raleigh competition that were problably close in age, maybe mid 70's. Both prettty nice 531 road frames and I think both came with 27 inch wheels. But the gitane had much tighter wheel to frame/fork clearances. It also had mafac competition brakes that had an additional adjustment slot at the brake to frame mounts. Made it much easier to switch the gitane to 700c. The brakes still worked fine, and it still looked fine. The raleigh already had generous wheel to frame/fork clearances with 27" wheeels, and even with the relatively long weinman centerpulls, was really a stretch with 700c. Didn't brake well, didn't look good. Seemed almost as if raleigh was trying to make it difficult, and gitane was trying to make it easy.