Originally Posted by giskard

Hmmm, after looking at pics of other bikes and the stay length required to fit a rack on those, I'm thinking I'd be better off leaving the stays as they are, or at least cut them down to the bare minimum required.

Looking at the below two pics it appears there may be some any strain from the rack itself on the stays:

Very hard to tell though, however slight.

On the last pic you can see where the bottom fixing of the rack very slightly interferes with the seat-stay weld, chipping off some of the paint in the process. I have rubber washers that I might use to provide some clearance behind the mount and also cover the bare metal where the paint was chipped away.


Once that's all sorted out, time to get either an Ortlieb Vario or Arkel Bug on the rack and see if heel-strike is an issue.