taking all the extra stuff cleans up the lines of the bike if you are worried about looks, it reduces the number of failure and friction points and cuts the weight down.
if you are going to go with a fixed bike, you might want to get a new wheel anyways (so that you can run cog and lock ring) otherwise, it would depend on the severity of the bend in the wheel.
as for the bike being a good candidate, what year is it?
the suburban had (for a while at least ) a very unusual shifting system that allowed the rider to shift while coasting
I was able to trace the bike to a May 1978 production date. Second, the rear derailleur is a Positron ll, Shimano’s first foray into indexed shifting. Because my home mechanic skills are limited to geared bikes built after 1983 I had not encountered Shimano’s Positron system. The five rear cogs are all in a fixed position ( the large cog being skipped tooth ) and the freewheel is located in the cranks. In place of a spring, the Positron uses a solid cable to accomplish the shifting, and the detents are built into the derailleur, not the levers. What this drive-train allows a rider to do is to shift while coasting. Any ideas on why this wouldn’t be a good system for current mountain bike applications?
from
http://bikecc.wordpress.com/2008/01/...winn-suburban/