> Is there any fairly easy way to achieve this without custom partitioning in the installer?
My experience has been that any distro will work with existing partitions ( I had a /Crypt partition which needed mounting install to install plus custom lay out). Use gparted, or somesuch in your f24 build to restructure your hd with the partitions you want. Using custom build will not have to invoke the partitioning software and this may allow it to push through the install. You will just have to use custom build to mount the partitions manually.