Singlespeed Handlebar Chop and Flip

About a year ago I bought a a $10 road bike off of Craigslist and converted it into a super hip single speed. While using it to commute to work, I started to get annoyed at the dropped handle bars. They were lower than my regular road bike making the brakes hard to reach. I decided to go even more hipster and convert them to bullhorn handlebars.

Overall the process was pretty simple. First I removed the handlebars from the bike as well as the brake cable (which was going to be replaced as well).

Next I chopped the handle bars to the correct length using a pipe cutter. If you do this yourself, I highly recommend this route as I've cut pipes with a Dremel before and this was significantly simpler. I sanded around the edge of the cut to clean it up a bit since the pipe cutter left it sharp.

Finally, I installed the handlebar again, hooked up the brake lever that I pulled from a defunct mountain bike, and wrapped the whole thing with some image appropriate bright orange handlebar tape. The mountain bike brake lever is really nice since its easier to pull a greater distance than the road lever that was on there. The picture below shows the the bike ready to ride (with my GPS and light).

Now please excuse me while I role up my skinny jeans, put on my Chrome messenger bag, and grab a can of PBR.

* Note: All hipster references are meant to be ironic. The writer of this blog does note condone or support the hipster lifestyle in any way.

Technologies: Pipe Cutter, Basic Tools