willawingwong

Are there rack eyelet spacing standards?

I recently had a frame shop weld rear rack eyelts onto my hooded/breezer style dropouts. However, the rack I had purchased did not fit. The eyelets were too far apart. I measured my eyelets and and they were spaced about 170mm apart and the rack was spaced about 130mm apart. My other bike has plate style dropouts and the eyelets are spaced 130mm apart.

I didn't specify any spacing when I sent them frame in, I assumed it was all the same. The shop welded the eyelets on the very outer ends of the hooded dropouts. Pictures I have seen online of other hooded dropouts have them welded closer to the inner ends.

Did the shop do this incorrectly or are there two diff standards (or more?) of rack eyelet spacings? If so, how can you tell when you are buying a rack if you are buying the right sized one?

prathmann

Don't know of any standard but the racks that I've used had pretty flexible supports so a rather wide range of eyelet spacings could be accommodated.

willawingwong

How much have you had to flex them? I had a Rack-Time fold-it where the supports aren't fixed so I just inserted a 20mm spacer. But for heavier duty racks where the legs are fixed, 20mm seems like alot to flex per support.

3speed

I think you should write the shop and ask them what their thinking was, or if they just did it without realizing it, in which case they should re-do it. A bike shop should have the foresight for such things before they go welding something onto a bike. Alternatively, can you mount the rack support on the inside of the dropout, putting the bolt in from the inside also? Would that fix the problem, or still leave too wide of spacing?

fietsbob

By doing it in person , in the shop that you bought the bike in, is a really good one ..

talking to the Mgr-Owner, Staff. holding it over the bike, etc

Particularly if mechanics is not one of your strengths..

unterhausen

can you post pics of the eyelets? If they are on the outside of the drops, that could cause problems with most racks. I would think they would put them where most breezer dropouts have the eyelets, in line with the inside of the drops

willawingwong

I'll try to post a picture tonight. For a description, the outer surface of the eyelet is inline with the outer edge fo the breezer dropout, not inline with the inside of the drops.

willawingwong

Thanks, just wrote to them on why. That was my thought that since they are a frame building shop, I wouldn't have to tell them where to put it. If it was wrong, maybe they had an intern/newbie do it since it is a simple job.

Bolts on the inside don't fit. There is not much standoff height of the threaded hole to the hooded dropout. The fastener head would interfere with the dropout and not fit.

Even fastening it from the outside, I even had to dremel the weld surface smooth so the rack supports would sit flush against the eyelet. Another, "I can't believe the shop didn't see this issue" moment.

willawingwong

Here are the picks of my eyelets.

ham

The Axiom Streamliner Disc DLX would work, has 168mm spacing:

https://www.axiomgear.com/files/diagr...r-disc-dlx.pdf

Bezalel

These look like the wrong eyelets for hooded dropouts. Since rack struts often overlap eyelets, longer eyelets are used on hooded dropouts. It looks like since they used normal eyelets they mounted them outwards to handle the overlap.

willawingwong

Awesome. Thanks for finding that!

You might be right. They definitely seemed too short. Even though they mounted them outwards, it didn't look like the picture when I first got it. I had to dremel away some of my hooded dropout and the filet weld to get it flush. You can see how much of the hood I had to dremel away in the pic. No supports would've sat flush the way it was.

willawingwong

I found this picture online. Looks like the eyelets have a bit of standoff material.