You are reading a single comment by @oxpoleon and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@oxpoleon
Hey! I actually am riding a 1969(ish) Carlton Corsa as my fixed-gear city bike.
In my opinion, it will look less "odd" with the 27 inch wheels as there's quite a lot of clearance on the frame. I tried both sizes and found that the rear callipers (which are Weinmann's really long reach ones) are also marginally too short to take a 700c wheel; from my experience of owning a few Carltons, the brake bridges tend to be pretty high on their models fitted with centre-pulls, so you'll need longer brakes. Yes, you can get a longer centre-pull brake than the Weinmann 999s on your bike from Dia-Compe, but it'll set you back more than buying a frame designed for 700c wheels.
As it's a cheap beater for me, I bought some reasonable, albeit unbranded, high flange hub, fixed gear alloy 27" wheels from Amazon (Yes, that Amazon). Set me back about £100 if I recall, which isn't super cheap, but the wheels seem pretty good after a year of city riding, and new 27 inch fixed gear wheels are like hen's teeth. More importantly, they are in keeping with the rest of the bike in terms of style.
If you're not planning on riding fixed, 27 inch wheels with "normal" hubs (i.e. no lockring) are common as muck, and cheap too. Tyre choice is a little lacking but still reasonable.
For reference, here is a picture of the wheels on the bike when I first got it, before it got rebuilt into something that isn't a total eyesore.
Final advice from me- if it hasn't been done already, changing the bottom bracket and cranks to ones without cotter pins dramatically improves the enjoyment you will have of riding.