Welcome to C&V. You came to the right place, and beware, starting with a Varsity could lead to lighter and better bikes in your future.

Where are you located? A C&Ver local to you might be able to help out with the rack and basket installation. It's not all that difficult but you want to make certain it is secure and that you understand the limits of the load it can carry.

A rear rack on a Varsity will mount very similar to this rack on my '75 Schwinn Sports Tourer. I usually like to mount mine with stainless steel screws and nuts I purchase at my local ACE Hardware. It is also important to use lock nuts or lock washers, because the vibrations and stresses from riding can work the nuts loose.





Sorry about the poor focus. This is a traditional Pletscher rack which was a typical rack sold at a Schwinn store back in the '60s-'80s and can still be found and bought (plenty of used ones on ebay). The are not designed for a really heavy load, but can handle 10-15 pounds safely. In the bottom picture you can see how the stays/support arms (and in my case the fender stays), are attached to an eyelet on the frame above the rear wheel drop out. The eyelet can be seen in this picture before the stays were mounted.



At the top the rack is clamped onto the frame seat stays. There are varieties to how a Pletscher rack is mounted at this point and they include a brace which extends to the seatpost collar and pinch bolt, or to the mount for the rear brake caliper mounting bridge. So depending on which version of rack you buy, this could be different.



In this case mine uses the seat stay clamp. As you can see, I have added thin padding under the clamp to keep the paint from being marred by the clamp. It's very important all the attachment points are very secure.

Best of luck on your Varsity project.