I have a nice steel tourer converted from a mid 90s mountain bike with the addition of drops, bar end shifters, cantis etc. It’s a really comfortable ride but the wheels are showing their age and it’s slow.

What wheels/tyres would folks suggest to speed it up?
Would 700c wheels work as I’m sure they’d fit the frame ?

Assuming your old frame doesn’t have disc mounts, you’ll have to put some adapters on to use rim brakes with 700c rims. like this

If it was me I would just get mavic xm317 rims built onto something basic and serviceable like deore. I have this on my work bike and they are cheap enough but robust and light-ish. And if you and your stuff are heavy, probably go for 1.5″ or bigger tyres. Mrs julian has continental city contact and they are ace. I have specialized nimbus and they are ok but i will probably try something else when they wear out.

Yup it’s got disc mounts – when I had it resprayed, Steels added IS mounts to the back of the frame. The difficulty with discs would be losing the dropped bars which I’m not keen to do.
Thanks for the tip with the brake adapter though.
I’m after speed rather than load carrying so wonder if rims to fit tyres narrower than 1.5 road tyres would be the way to go.

If you are all disky, you can get road versions of the very excellent avid bb7 which will work with your road levers. You might need a bit of bodging to get a rack around the back one and mudguard stays around the front one.

1″ tyres fit fine on 17mm internal diameter xc rims (like 717’s or 317’s).

But with disc mounts I would definitely go for proper touring 700c rims and skinnier tyres, they will fit fine in a mountain bike frame as there is a bit of mud clearance and biiig tyre clearance built in. Plenty of people race cyclocross on mountainbike frames with 700c rims and 28mm cx tyres in them.

mmmm thanks JW the avid brake/700c option sounds interesting.