Hi All,

I'm helping my borther fix up Dad's old Raleigh racer. I'm not used to road bikes, tend to fettle with mountain bikes.

The Bike's old (maybe 25yrs) has 27" wheels, the front with a flat spot that is making it hard to pump the tyre up to full pressure without the inner tube escaping and thr rear has a very worn 5 gear cassette.

So looks like I could do with replacement wheelset and rear cassette, probably going to try Ebay.

What do I need to be aware of?

Can I use 700cc wheels (given that they're not far off 27" and there's a bit of adjustibility in the brakes)?

Do they still do 5 speed cassettes?

If I get a wheelset that takes only 8-9 speed cassettes what do you reckon my chances are of getting the gears to work? (Bareing in mind they are the type operated by a lever on the down tube. I'm guessing it would just be harder to get the right position of the lever for each gear?)

All help much appreciated.

Take a look here.

Cheers Mike, will use that info best I can.

Anyone got any personal experience of doing this?

Rear hub spacing. Your frame is probably 124 or 126mm and modern road hubs are 130mm OLN. Unless it's Reynolds 753 (highly unlikely) you can bend out the stays then line up the dropouts with a big adjustable wrench.

700c wheels will fit but you may need to fit a shorter brake caliper. I very much doubt it though as manufacturers in the seventies knew that riders would want to fit sprint rims which are about the same size as 700c.

I've only ever seen six speed or more cassette hubs so I suspect you have a screw-on freewheel. Shimano do a 14-28 for a fiver or so. You may as well go for a Shimano eight-speed 130mm cassette hub if you decide to bend the stays out.

All the above from personal experience BTW.

Ohhh bending :-)

Usually people tell me not to bend things, brake levers, disc brakes, handlebars, rims ...

I have just the adjustable wrench for the job, and even a strange version of a mole grip that may come in handy. Damn, not got the vice though