HT on Road Bike?

[flashstar]

My friend who is interested in building a motorized bike really wants to go with a road bike. The frame is large enough to hold the engine for sure. The only issue that I see is that the handle bars are not straight but instead drop down like road bike handle bars.

I'm thinking that I could cut the end off of the throttle and slide it up the handle bar so that my friend can use the brake and throttle without shifting too much.

Will this work or is it dumb to start with a road bike?

Here is the bike:

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=12080282

Thanks.

 

[Hawaii_Ed]

People have also used the old road bike style shifters for the throttle too. My friend 5-7 heaven uses a thumb lever. There are options besides the twist syle.

 

[happycheapskate]

Simple solution, $5-10 and some time

Get a cheap CHEAP aluminum V-Brake lever, preferably one of the CHEAP 2 finger BMX style ones (source below)

wallow out the clamp with a sand paper roller on a drill or dremel, or use a metal grater drill bit, rat tail file, or finger and really course paper.

Wallow it out till it fits on the drop bar. You may have to round out the outside of the band a little too so it can roll up the drops, or expand it a little with a screwdriver.

But you can get a V-brake lever to work on almost any road bike drop bar (except the really thick odd ones like some 80's and 90's Cinelli, definitely not going to be on a $200 walmart)

This v-brake lever should have plenty of pull travel for throttle, and you can orient it near the standard brake/shift lever&hood so you can operate it from the drop or the elbow, whichever you like.

If you hunt around you can use a dual pull road brake lever on one side, and the old lever on the other. I don't know how much cable pull you will get though.

http://www.niagaracycle.com/product_info.php?products_id=402840 Tektro lever $7.44

 

[happycheapskate]

Another way would be to put a flat/riser bar on the road bike.
www.nashbar.com Check your bars center bulge dimensions!

 

[happycheapskate]

That bike comes with a BMX/mtn stem and shims to fit the road bar. I bet you can get a cruiser bar for it easy.

 

[roughrider504]

I'm pretty sure that the handlebars on the walmart road bikes come apart in order to fit a grip shift on the tops. This could work for the throttle, but flat bars or risers would work much better and wouldn't take much work to swap. The stock grip shifters should transfer over to mountain bars with only some longer cables.

 

[happycheapskate]

I am familiar with this bike. The drop bars are 1 piece, with 2 shims on the "bulge" to mate with a cheap 1" threaded stem.

The gripshifts slide right on around the bend because the bar is narrow. Shimano and Gripshift have both made shifters for regular road drops before, but they are rare/obsolete now.

I used to have some wierd bar ends in the 90's that had built in "road style" drop elbows on them, adn they went on flat bars! how weird. I hated them after a week and gave them away.

IMPORTANT NOTE: the "Chevy" bike has a diamond/almost square tube shape on the down tube. This will make mounting difficult!

It is Not enough to just mount one clamp to the down tube. Please look at this bike in person at walmart or your LBS (they are ending up in bike shops now as cheap used bikes).

Good luck! For the $100-150 its a pretty neat bike.