Bicycle Mechanics - Custom bullhorns?

I'd like to convert my road bike bar into bullhorns. Anybody tried this and is it possible to keep the same brake levers? I was thinking of taking the bar, turning it upside down, and cutting it in the begining of the 1st curve.

any help would be greatly appreciated,

thanks.

yes. many many people have done this. commonly called "flop and chop" or something similar. I'm sure there's plenty of discussion of this in the single-speed/fixed forum. usually this is done with either a pipe cutter or a hacksaw. make sure you have your setup the way you want before you cut so you know you'll be happy with the result.

Thanks!

I'll check in the SS section.

Any other advice would also be appreciated.

Here's a set:

http://tinyurl.com/l5t2y

Note the stylish end caps.

i highly recommend using a pipe cutter. Much cleaner cut. Very little filing needed.

The pipe cutter is fine for Al bars, for steel you will probably break a couple of blades. They're great for doing BMX bars, but they're a real pain to use on the curve of drops.

if it's a 70's/80's road bike with the two position levers, you can take off the goofy suicide levers and mount the main lever upside down under the drops. This works quite well.

I have used a craftsman pipe cutter on steel handle bars and frame tubing. It cuts fine but you will wear out/break blades. A replacement blades are cheap @ local hardware. I have used aero brake levers and the bull horn style, both worked well, but the bull horn style looked more "finished"

Pipe cutters are difficult, if not impossible to use on curved sections of the bar.

Yeah, I had mine inching along on the curves. need to have something to prevent that from happening. I don't know, maybe put some hose clamps on either side to keep the cutter in place?

When I chopped mine I didn't have a pipe cutter. And as stated by The Fixer I don't think that a pipe cutter would even work on curved bars. I ended up using duct tape and a hack saw. I wrapped to strips of tape on either end of where I wanted to cut leaving about 1mm of bare bar exposed between. This acted like a guide for the blade. It makes a huge difference because it real hard to cut a straight line on a curved bar X2! The more tape you wrap the more support to hold the saw in line. This same method can also be applied to a stem if you dont wnat to buy one of those clamp guide thingys. Good luck!