New phone background acquired thanks
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New profile pic
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that photo is begging for a Keith Haring treatment
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I’m 100 kg, would it work?
Yes but your legs should rest on the saddle or the rider’s lap
Looks legit?
Also anyone owning a Surly front rack can now burn theirs to the ground:
https://www.tubus.com/en/products/front-carriers/tubus-product/grand-expedition-front/
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The copy for it is great: “There must be no crimping.”
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Experimental rack perimeter:
¼" stainless steel and 5mm carbon fiber rack perimeter. Approximately 7.5 × 9.5" & 30 grams dry-fit. I ran out of stainless steel, so it came to a stop here, but I need to braze together some lugs for the central rails, light mount, fender mount, & fork blade/crown stays (because ohfuckno I’m not going to take a stone to the carbon fiber because I’m planning on another 40 years of use out of my lungs and filling them full of carbon fiber dust would not help.) before gluing the whole shebang together and plunking it onto my traditional randonneuse.
(Now 50 grams. The one long-legged lug is the one that’s going to have the di2 battery mount brazed to it.)
I’m hoping for ~100 grams for everything, but it’ll probably be closer to 150 grams after gluing everything together and clearcoating it all.
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That’s neat.
What’s a normal rack weigh?
Rod or tube CF?
The lightest rack I’ve made from steel was a 6×6" ¼th" one that came in at 180 grams before painting.
My normal racks are more in the ballpark of 350-400 grams.
This uses tubes, because that’s what I have in my bike mess. I could thread wiring through them for the front light because it’s going to be bonded instead of brazed, but the di2 battery/future dynohub power mount is also going onto it and it will be much less fuss to just yolo some zip ties on to hold the wiring in place.
Interesting offerings: https://bikerumor.com/2019/05/31/pelago-partners-with-restrap-on-versatile-uk-made-utility-racks-baskets/
Man, this weight is the stuff dreams are made of
Very curious to see how this works out
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Damn @Orc that is some excellent wizardry. Seems like you could make modular racks pretty easily with this concept?
Anyway, I came here to ask what’s good in terms of prefab struts. I’m thinking surly because it is steel and not aluminum?
Going to do something like this for this very bag:
Alternately, maybe @Orc wants to weld (or glue??) up a less janky “keep bag out of my front tire but not really support the weight of it” device that attaches to my fork crown mounts AND mid-fork mounts.
I’d be happy to. That’s a clever way to support a narrow hard-bottomed bag, but if I was going to do it it would definitely have a triangle deck going to the crown to reduce the chance that the bag would sag down far enough to rub against the front tire.
There’s nothing narrow about this bag. It does have an insert that is relatively stiff at the bottom though. I just need a little something to give it some triangulation.
90 grams as photographed (with a lightweight aluminum backstop; I may swap it out for stainless, and that will fatten it up):
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A rack so nice you built it twice
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Well, now it’s glued together (except for the backstop & mountpoints) and waiting for me to adjust the lug angles with the 2×4 of loving persuasion.
And I’ve ordered another fistful of carpet fiber tubing so I can turn around and make a second one with better lugs.
what if you did it all with aluminum tubing for the lugs? you could use that muggyweld aluminum solder/braze stuff then heat treat in a toasty ove. or is that just getting a lil too carried away on something that’s already pushing it?
I’d need a better grade of aluminum & larger diameter tubing if I did that, though muggyweld + my torch is a cheaper solution than buying an electric welding rig for anything smaller than a bicycle frame.