Maybe.

Look at your tires. The size of the tire will be on the sidewall. It might say something like "28-622", that would indicate a 700c wheel. It might also say something like "700x28", which obviously would indicate a 700c wheel. If it's "27 x whatever", you can probably use 700c wheels, but you might have problems with brake reach. If it's "26 x 1 3/8" (35-590), you might be able to fit 700c wheels, but it could be tight, and again you could have brake reach issues.

You'll notice the theme here is that you want to be able to use 700c wheels. If you can't, the bike probably isn't a good candidate for conversion.


With regard to the crank, you may be able to use what you have. If the chainrings are removable independent of the crankarms, you can take all but one of them off and you're set. If not, you'll probably want a new crankset.

In the best possible scenario, your bike will take an English threaded bottom bracket and you can get a 103mm square taper bottom bracket and nearly any singlespeed crankset to get a good chainline with the 700c rear wheels you got above.

In the worst scenario, your bottom bracket takes some odd Raleigh-specific threading that nobody makes anymore. That indicates no conversion.

Another strong possibility is that you currently have a one-piece crank, which you'd recognize by seeing something like the image on the left below on the non-drive side:



(The image comes from http://sheldonbrown.com/opc.html)

That gives you the option of either getting a new chainring and keeping the crank as is, or buying an adapter which makes this work like the English threaded ideal above.

That's probably more than enough for you to process right now. Come back and ask lots more questions as you get details.