Pedal strike is talked about quite a bit when people are putting together a new bike or upgrading parts, but there are so many variables involved that short cranks or a high BB doesn't mean that much alone.
Since the angle of lean is what ultimately causes a pedal strike, how about doing a bit of a survey to see what angles are common. This isn't a hard measurement to make, but it's a bit more involved than just measuring a seatpost or something. Bear with me; here's how to do it:
You'll need a tape measure, a plumbbob, and a level floor/pavement with a seam or line running along it. A piece of string with a washer tied to the end makes a plumbbob accurate enough for what we're doing here.
Find a sidewalk seam or a line on your linolium floor or something to make measuring easier. Set your cranks so that the crank on your side of the bike is pointing straight down and stand the bike with both wheels centered on the line/seam. Extend the tape measure a few feet and put the zero mark on the line somewhere beneath the top tube and extending perpendicular to the seam/line.
Now tip the bike sideways until the pedal just touches the ground. Rotate the pedal so your clips/straps are up or the pedal is in whatever orientation it usually is when you are riding. Hold the bike in this position and run the plumbob over the top tube. Get the measurement of where the plumbbob touches the measuring tape, which tells you how far your top tube is sideways from the point where the tires touch the ground. You will need to add or remove about a half inch to compensate for the plumbob string hanging over the side of the top tube instead of directly from the center of the tube (which is impossible). Make this correction to the measurement.
Now stand the bike back up straight and measure the height of the middle of the top tube from the floor. If you have a sloping top tube, be sure to measure to the same point where the plumbbob was hung.
Now you get to do some high school level algebra and geometry. Remember the quadradic formula? The law of sines? All that fun triangle ****? Here's the real life application. Trust me; your old geometry teacher would be proud. Or something.
Anyways, here's the formula:
a = distance from ground/floor to center of top tube with bike stood up straight
b = distance horizontally from center of top tube to tire contact line at point of pedal strike
C = angle of lean (straight up = 0 degrees, fallen over on your side = 90 degrees. pedal strike angle is somewhere in between)
C = asin(b/a)
Since I think nobody wants to do trig and geometry without getting paid or being carroted by a GPA, I made a little web calculator to do this. Just punch in your two measurements and it spits out the angle.
http://www.basementfreaks.com/member.../pedal_strike/
Reply with your angle and any pertinent info you can muster, such as crank length, frame type (track, road, cyclocross, etc.) and pedal type.
I'm running 165 cranks on a Raleigh Grand Prix road frame conversion with Nashbar double-sided SPD clipless pedals and it strikes at 35 degrees from vertical. The pedals give me a good bit more angle than I would get with flat pedals since they don't stick out nearly as far.