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| How I built my front and rear racks |
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| Go to the bottom of the page for pictures of the finished racks. |
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| This is a photo of the end tabs that are bolted to the rear dropouts. To make them, I cut a slot in some 5/16 .035 tubing with my angle grinder. Then, I got some flat sheet that I had from a previous project, and (after cutting it to an appropriate tab size) fitted it in, like fitting dropouts to a fork blade. After brass brazing them in place, I punched a dimple into the right spot, and drilled it for the bolt, and then I ground down all the extra metal that I dared to. At first, I was dissatisfied that it's appearance looked amateur and they didn't match... but now I think: looks hand made, doesn't it? |
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| Below are a group of other photos of making these racks. I kind of made it up as I went along... |
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| Using the bike as a "jig" made the process easy and accurate. |
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| Here, I'm bending the tubing with heat (torch is not shown, but it involved waving it along the tubing and heating it to a dull red. |
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| When you can't jig something, you can braze a bit of brass stick on the end, position it above the joint, and let it fall into the joint while brazing; all while holding it in place-- (since you don't need the spare hand to hold the rod you can use it to hold the work instead). It's not appropriate for main joints, but works great on racks and small parts. Alternatively you could have a friend hold things together. Don't forget to give them some brazing goggles! |
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| Above, it's finished. The main struts and parallel tubes are 5/16 .035. I kept adding 1/4" .035 tubing to it everywhere else, until if felt quite sturdy. The main rack platform is about 14" long, and will support my tent better than the standard shorter ones they sell in bike shops. It weighs about 1.3 pounds. |
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| From here you can see how it's clamped to the seatpost, and rests on the bike frame where the seatpost inserts. Notice the fender support near the rear of the rack. |
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| This front rack attaches to the upper fork, as well as the dropouts. Two water bottle bosses are brazed to the upper fork for this. I put 20 lbs of cookbooks in my saddlebags and rode about on paved and gravel roads, and I'm happy with it. I'm hoping to keep the whole touring load to 35 lbs or less. |
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