staehpj1

I am setting up another older Cannondale road race bike for ultralight touring since I left my last one in Florida at my daughter and son in-law's house to use when I visit them. I am considering using front panniers this time and carrying only the tent (or the bivy, mini tarp, and sleeping pad) on the back. That leads to my question...

How sturdy is the bagman? Will it support a 2 or 3 pound load attached only to it or would the load need to also be attached to the saddle directly?

I may just buy a bagman or may fabricate something that attaches to the seat in a similar manner. If I have to I may go with a regular rear rack or possibly make something that attaches to the seat rails and either the brake bridge or a couple p-clamps.

Once again the goal is to keep the total of bike and gear below 40 pounds.

sstorkel

The Bagman is sturdy, meaning it won't fall apart, but it does flex. I've tried mine with a couple of different saddles. One of the saddles doesn't end up with much clearance between my quick-release Bagman and the rear tire. When I hit bumps or potholes with a 10-15lb load in my Carradice bag, I could feel it making contact with the rear tire! In that case, my bag was attached to both the saddle and the Bagman.

Your proposed 2-3lb load is much lighter than mine, so the Bagman will likely flex less. Still, if clearance between the Bagman and tire is tight, I'd be a little concerned. A beam-style seatpost rack might be a better, and less-expensive, option.

MileHighMark

See:

https://www.gravelbike.com/?p=806

Bekologist

I don't think the bagman is the ideal LW rack for strapping goods to a bike with. I've tried it. The stays are tapered, so the straps have a tendency to work their way up to the narrower part of the bagman.

Perhaps an Arkel SP rack? or a Marks' rack from Rivendell/Nitto might be a better option.

cheers!

staehpj1

That got me thinking... I am loathe to spend well over $100 for a rack that only needs to carry a 2 pound load, but... The little Nashbar rack (on sale for $9.99) for might adapt to do about the same duty.

arctos

The Arkel Randonneur Seat Post Rack looks promising and may suit your purposes except for price. I like the three point attachement for stability compared to straight clamp on seat post racks. Can be easily moved from bike to bike too.

nun

I agree, the bagman is well designed to work with a saddlebag, but it's not really a general purpose rack. Personally I avoid Arkel stuff. It's very well made, in fact too well made, every Arkel product I've picked up has weighted twice what I expected. There are plenty of seatpost/seat mounted racks that should work fine for a few pounds. In fact you could fit your stuff in one of the smaller Carradice saddlebags if you have saddle loops or attach some to your saddle or just use an https://www.revelatedesigns.com/ saddle bag.

staehpj1

Looking at my tent I am starting to reconsider the idea of using a seat mounted rack. The biggest problem is that the poles are crazy long for a small tent. I really like this tent in pretty much every other way. With tent poles almost two feet long, I am thinking it might make sense to just find the lightest duty regular rear rack I can find and carrying the tent with it's long axis straight back.

I looked into seat post mounted racks but the ones I found all weigh more than the lighter duty "regular" racks. Some of the lighter ones are about 1 pound and have the advantage of carrying the load lower.

djb

that would be my inclination, it will work perfectly well, will be cheap (up here probably around $15 tops) and you will not have to worry about stuff moving around.
No, you will not have that "super lightly loaded" look of stuff off the seatpost, but who cares.