For a brief period I am going to swap everything off my early 90's cannondale to an early 80's schwinn steel frame that is bigger. The thing is, the shifters on the cannopndale are on the down tube which is fine with me, I should be able to get a clamo on setup for those pretty cheap right?
also, how do you get those stupid clampsoff of the headset?
Is this whole project going to take less than a 6 pack of beer like I want it to so I don't lose days on the road? shouldn't everything be compatible other than the chain needing to get longer since the chainstays are longer?
anything I should be conscious of before I get caught half pregnant? seems like when I sit down to tinker I always get to a point where I need a crazy obscure tool, or it just takes too many hours.

Please leave the parts on the cannondale, I am sure you will be much happier if you do.

It's about 4 cm smaller. It is irritating an old cartilage tear.

You will play hell finding a downtube clamp to mount the Cdales index shifters on the schwinn. Plenty of clamp on friction shifters tho.

Without having the bikes in front of me, I can think of lots of potential issues. If you still have the shifters that came on your Schwinn, that's probably the easiest one to solve.

1. Look at the tube where your front derailleur mounts. Bet they're different diameters.
2. Check out the wheel diameters. You might have a 27" vs. 700c difference. That can affect your brake reach.
3. Your rear triangle spacing will probably be different but you can just strong arm that.

Not only do I doubt the 1 six packness of this project, it has the hallmarks of the type of project that might have you chaseing obscure parts for a couple of weeks.