MacOS Sierra. An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again.

You have some sort of soft error on the disk. You cannot convert an APFS formatted drive to HFS+. You will need to do the following:

Install Lion Through Yosemite from Scratch

1. Restart the computer. Immediately, at or before the chime, hold down the Command and R keys until the Apple logo and progress bar appear. Wait until the Utility Menu appears.
2. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
3. After Disk Utility loads select the disk entry (this is the out-dented entry) from the side list. Click on the Erase button in Disk Utility's toolbar.
4. Set the Partition Map to GUID and the Format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button
5. When the process has completed quit Disk Utility and return to the Utility Menu.
6. Select Install OS X and click on the Continue button. 

Sierra must be installed on a disk formatted HFS+. High Sierra and Mojave are able to read-only APFS formatted disks. For now only Catalina can read & write APFS formatted disks.