Originally Posted by
EarlGrey
Thanks for your contributions, just ot clarify, I am looking for a bike with 24" wheels for a regular adult, not interested in a bicycle for kids that can fit an adult.
Yes, 24" are different formats: it does not matter.
As stated, the bike "style" should be a non-suspended steel frame from the 90s.
Why?
Difficult call. Out of curiosity, mostly. I suggest have a read at this blog entry where the experience that led
Paul de Vivie, alias ‘Vélocio’ to a 24" wheels are quite well described/reported
https://hadland.wordpress.com/2012/0...dult-bicycles/ (stored permanently here)
I'm a little skeptical of their method in getting to the 24" figure. Today we scrupulously talk about rim specs, but in Velocio's day, it was more common to refer to bicycle wheels by their nominal diameter
including the tire, the rim dimension being something that you inferred separately. The French system that gave us the "650B" and "700C" designations dates back to that time, and included small wheel sizes. 500A wheels (I'm not sure if there was a 500B or 500C) used a rim of only 440mm in diameter, so putting 50mm tires on rims of that size gives a total wheel diameter of only about 21.25".
Note how the wheels on his small-wheeled bike only came up to about his knees, maybe a little more. It would take a very tall person to make 24" wheels look that small! Yet, Velocio appears to be a relatively small guy in most pictures.
I could definitely be wrong about some of the fine details, but I think his actual wheel diameters were much smaller than 24", at least on his famous small-wheeled bikes. And if you hold up a ruler to a 26" MTB wheel, 24" is not radically smaller.
The point of all this is that trying to find or custom-build a bike around 24" wheels is probably going to be disappointing. They won't be small enough to get the compactness of truly small wheels like 20", and availability of parts like rims, tires, and tubes might be frustrating to boot.