Borgward: It is very simple to change your circa 1979 Schwinn World Sport to upright riding with tourist handlebars & tourist brake levers. You will have to change the brake cables. The BELL Pitcrew 600 cable set is between $10 and $14 depending from what retailer and/or Amazon & ebay store. Some Walmart stores carry them on the shelves, and it is available at Walmart online. Ace Hardware's online site has been known to be the usual low price leader on this for the past several years with it being around $10. It is not stocked in Ace Hardware stores, it is only online. Amazon typically is about two bucks or a buck and a half more but sometimes about the same. The Bell Pitcrew 600 cable set is widely available. No need to spend more than $14, no matter where you choose to source it. You will need a brake cable cutter. The best choice is approx $16, as this same exact cable cutter as branded versions selling for more than twice that.
The reason that you will need a brake cable cutter is because the cable ends for where the brake cable attaches to the drop bar brake levers are a narrow mushroomed bullet shape, while the cable ends for tourist brake levers require the larger Aspirin tablet pill shaped cable end. The Bell Pitcrew 600 cable set has both of those, as you see in the Bell Pitcrew cable set, the brake cables have the narrow mushroom bullet on one end & they have the Aspirin tablet pill shape on the other end. You simply cut off the end that you will not need. You will also need to cut the cable to the proper length, as you receive a lengthy cable that is more than enough for many applications. The Bell Pitcrew 600 cable set does include the necessary aluminum ferrules for Weinmann/DiaCompe Tourist levers, where the cable enters the tourist levers.
It is quite a good cable set even if it were twice the price!
Here are your 1979 Schwinn World Tour picture & details, and random, specific part suggestions that would flawlessly transform your World Tour to perfect tourist duty. By random, I mean that these links below are random examples only to show you specific parts that you'd need to source, but by no means do you need to source them from these, as you can probably find better pricing from other sources if you spend an hour or two looking and comparing others.
Vintage Schwinn World were made from 1950 to 1988. This page shows images and text from old catalogs of this classic bicycle.
bikehistory.org
This index compatible cable set features 2 brake and 2 gear cables, all housing and ferrules. The compressionless housing allows for better shifting performance.Find the BIKE FIX CABLE SET at Ace.
www.acehardware.com
Beyond that, you'd only need to get a spring tourist saddle seat that you really like!
Spend some time looking at different tourist handlebars and compare their rise and width, to select the one that you may like the best, if you don't already have a favorite tourist style handlebar. Even so, you do want to see exactly where you'd like your hands to be given the frame's dimension and existing stem. No need to change the stem, as you can likely find tourist handlebar(s) that will place your hands where you'd want them. Your stem is ancient from the seventies when those road bikes had the same 25.4 (one inch 1") clamp area, so thousands of handlebars from common old American bikes from the 1930's through the seventies and into the early eighties will fit, as they all have the 25.4mm one inch clamp area and the 7/8" (22.2mm) outer tube diameter. You'll notice that the Weinmann tourist levers have 22.2mm stamped on them, and those old Weinmann tourist levers attach using a medium flathead screwdriver, extremely simple, flawless operation, and lightweight and look nice too. Essentially all the Weinmanns (and Diacompe clones) from about 1964 through at least 1980 are exactly the same from a functional standpoint. Yes, the mid sixties had RED dot with knife ends on the levers, before the ball ends arrived, and then the color of the dot became more of an ORANGE, but it does not matter as they are functionally the same, none are better than the other. Yes, some people doing exact restorations of mid sixties bikes want the RED ones with knife ends, or RED ones with ball ends for late sixties restorations. Choose a matching pair based on them being nice and clean in appearance. Yes beat up and scarred Weinmanns will still work great, but why buy that to save a dollar, as millions were made and hundreds of thousands of them are fifty plus years old but still look like new. You need not pay much more than twenty dollars for a perfect looking pair. Same thing with the old Schwinn tourist handlebars, as Schwinn had the industry's best chrome quality. I suggest the Schwinn 7881 handlebars that were in use from 1967 to about 1977 on Collegiate, Breeze, Suburban, Speedster, etc, but there are plenty others that you might prefer.
If you prefer upright riding, you should change it over to tourist style. It is easy to do. You may already have parts bikes, or local access to inexpensive and or free parts bikes sources to salvage from.
