Originally Posted by
hairnet
A regular road bike, so to say, will have room for tires larger than 23mm, a longer wheel base, fender and/or rack mounts. A Schwinn World Sport is one of those. Findng something like a Centurion Dave Scott Iron Man would be a high end production 80's bike without any of those accomodations.
The question is what do you really want out of your bike? Nice light and fast are rarely practical everyday bikes. People do it all the time but how much are you willing to deal with a bike that doesn't work for you much beyond being a light set of wheels.
Are you a messenger of some sort?
Not a messenger per se, I was doing some food delivery until a bit earlier this month. And I probably should have chosen my words a bit more carefully, it's not clearance tightness (that's mainly for aesthetics) but actual geo tightness. I thought max clearance on racing bikes was generally 28 or 25c. I'm currently riding 28's year round but I wouldn't mind going down to 25's or 23's.