Huffy Nel Lusso - 1st build by a new guy

The wheels I have are basically the same as the wheel master set, made in USA (out of Chinese parts) and they've held up really well to a lot of abuse. I picked up mine at my local bike shop, just asked for a 26" coaster brake wheel and those are all they stock.

I like that welded cargo rack too. I had an idea- to support my cargo rack by bolting supports into the rear canti brake mounts, rather than the rear wheel dropouts. It would look similar to yours but require no welding.

Just bend it ! Take it off the bike first though. Looks like you only need to bend it out away from the engine a touch.

Huffy Tip : Their seats look cool for about a week then start falling apart. Get a new one coming ! Also the peddles fall apart too.

I would remove the rubber between your frame and mount too. It will just lead to problems.

Where is your coaster brake arm ? Looks like its not even on there or hiding very good.

Thanks for the thread, I'll be building up one soon and all this information is helpful!

you must have the coaster brake arm,,,,and you will get more power too the rear wheel if you use the chain



lol

Don't ride that without the coaster brake arm!!!!! (It will snap the axle in half when you pedal backward!)

Just bend the arm to clear the sprocket bolts.

That has got to be about the longest intake I've ever seen! That came stock with the kit?

A normal stock intake should leave plenty of room for your air filter. Also get rid of the rubber in the mounts, it'll just degrade and make your mounts loose which leads to broken studs.

You could gain a little more room by putting something between the rear mount block and the motor then sliding your front mount higher up on the downtube.

corgi1 said:

Wheels: Husky Bicycles

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Ditto,I replaced the rear wheels on 4 bikes I motorized.

Three-Wire said:

I settled on a Huffy Nel Lusso because I like the frame - the welded-in luggage rack was a big part of the decision. I've never been a big fan of coaster brakes anyway, and with the extra weight of the engine I just didn't feel comfortable with them in principle.

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A barely maintained coaster brake can skid the rear wheel every time-- which is as much braking as you can get on the rear wheel anyway. The main problem with them for the purposes of the usual motor kit is that the included rear sprocket can interfere with the hub torque arm, dustcap, or both; an inexperienced mechanic can easily cripple the brake or make a self-loosening rear hub in the course of resolving this mechanical interference.

In my observation, most long reach caliper brakes (like what you plan to use) do not have enough braking power to skid the rear wheel under a seated rider without a front brake helping to unload the rear wheel. Under those circumstances, that's still all the rear wheel braking you can get, though. It's the effectiveness of the front brake you want to be most discriminating about.

For the calipers, I ordered a pair of Tektro side-pull brakes and cables from HuskyBicycles.com. The Tektro calipers are too big for this bike (both too deep and too wide), but would probably work great on a 3"-wide wheel.

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Tektro C324 brakes are fine quality items, but they are for a very specific application. They are for braking 24 x 3" wheels and tires retrofitted to 26" size frames. 26" wheels require brakes with shorter reach. BMX caliper brakes usually have the right amount of reach for cruisers with 26" wheels.

Get dual pivot calipers if you can. They have better mechanical advantage and stiffness than single pivot calipers, and they don't have the inconsistent centering of single pivots. But if you use dual pivot calipers, keep in mind that one pad will swing almost perpendicularly towards the rim, and the other approaches the rim in a curve that reaches up towards the tire. If you adjust them both to the same height on the rim, the short arm's pad can wind up scraping on the tire as the pads wear. So adjust that pad a little lower on the rim.

The Huffy cruiser frames have the right sized seat tube for the rear engine mount, but the downtube is oversized and slightly oval where the front mount will have to go.

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Yep, that's one of the characteristics of a traditional cruiser frame that makes it a questionable choice for a motorized bike conversion. Most other kinds of traditional bicycles have straight round downtubes that are easier to mount things on.

Chalo

Re: Front hub

Three-Wire said:

I could not get the lock nuts loose from the cones and mangled one of the dust covers in the process... I don't think the dust cover is critical for holding things together but it does protect the balls from the outside world so it's important. My local bike shops all tell me it's okay to ride the bike in its current condition but I'm not too sure.

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You can probably improvise an effective shield from a rubber washer or fat O-ring from the hardware store. The stock dust shield isn't really all that effective anyway. A dust cap is not a common individual item-- my shop salvages them for later use, but many shops don't. The usual replacement item would be something like a Wald front axle kit, with a new axle, cones, locknuts, dustcaps, and axle nuts for about $6 or $7 last time I checked.

If your local bike shops can't support you with parts for such a common traditional style bike, that doesn't speak very well for your local bike shops. I can understand them being a little contemptuous of a famously shoddy bike like a Huffy (really, Huffy's reputation is richly earned), and I can see why they would much rather you had bought a bike from their shop if you are going to be calling on them for help. (On both these points, my professional opinion is that they should suck it up and just tell you what they can offer.) But to feign ignorance or worse, to be ignorant, about replacement parts for old-fashioned shoddy bikes is just incompetent.

I'm going to take just a moment to go off on a closely related tangent:

The reason that many bike shops won't work on Huffys or other department store bikes is that it's so often a huge waste of time and a money-losing proposition for the shop, while being a waste of money for the customer. They never just need one thing, as you have observed. But because the bikes are usually screwed up from the get-go, their owners are used to that, and don't bring them for service until the bikes are completely inoperable. By then, setting them right would cost a lot more than the new cost of the bike. It's a recipe for frustration for everybody.

But they should certainly get you whatever parts you need to do the work yourself!

A bike shop that will agree to work on department store bikes is either a really good shop, or one that hasn't yet figured out what a losing game it often is. There is a very old-fashioned and now rare business model of things like "Billy Bob's Lawn Equipment and Bicycle Repair", and junky bikes will never be turned away there-- but the quality of bicycle work at such a place is even more of a gamble than at a real bicycle shop.

Chalo

Actually I started out with coaster brake only and now that I've added V brakes I rarely use the coaster.

As far as using lock up power as a judge of how good a brake is, a locked up skidding tire has less stopping power then a slowed tire. The main thing I've noticed since I switched is I have way more control with the V-brake then I did with the coaster. The coaster has too close of a line between hard stopping and a full lockup.

Hey Three wire....bought the same bike yesterday to be my first build. How do you get or find a free shipping coupon for gasbikenet? I could sure use that. Thanks.