Weird fork eyelet - Mounting a front rack
 

I recently picked up a well used, mud covered, 2022 Giant “Cross City [aka Escape] 2 Disc Equipped”. My plan is to strip it down to frame and fork, and re-build it from there.

For now, my concern is how well this will work with a front rack (Tubus Tara?). Pictured is the drive-side front fork, pictured from the front, looking towards the rear. There's a pan-head bolt in the eyelet, just above the dropout and QR skewer-nut. The top of the bolt-head is pressed against the fork, but there's a gap between the bottom of the bolt-head and the fork. The bolt & eyelet are parallel to the skewer, but the face of the eyelet is not perpendicular to that. A bolt/washer/spacer/rack-flange can't sit flush with the fork and perpendicular to the bolt. Same thing on both sides of the fork.

What is up with this? What were they thinking? Is there a good way to install a low-rider rack on this fork? Should I just pretend that the surface around the eyelet is perpendicular to the bolt? Should I at least use nylon washers against the fork and the bolt-head?


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c032564c1e.jpg

Use a thick washer/spacer and file a beveled edge on one side which looks like it would work.

If that dropout does not have so-called "lawyer lips," then the screw might have originally secured a small quick-release-retaining plate. A longer high-strength screw or bolt plus a thick spacer theoretically would be enough to secure a rack leg. I wouldn't try carrying much weight with the rack, though.

It's flat on the inside. I doubt that this was intended for a rack, but a fender strut would install cleanly on the inside.

I looked up a full pic of these bikes..there's a mid-fork eyelet designed for racks, but I don't know what they were thinking with the dropout design. Not great!

Giant did what many bike designers that work for large production brands do. They provided a spec list item... The span between a bike's details of fit and what an after market accessory needs can be vast.

One possible solution is to use an angle adjustable spacer between the rack and the drop out face. Avid disk brake mounting spacers are an example. Another is to use a stand off spacer (like what use to come in Blackburn low rider fastener packs and file one end to match the drop ouy face. Andy

thread in a stud, tighten a nut on to the stud, & install the rack's legs on to the remaining-exposed stud with a set of washers & another nut.

2022 Giant, it has lawyer-lips.

This picture shows more of the surrounding area -

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...54ac16bd45.jpg

Manufacturer describes the fork: “Alloy, rack mount, disc”

Very weird and inconvenient that the outside edge has that weird curve.

Not a bad idea… Thread a long pan-head bolt from the back, use that as a stud, and sandwich the rack flange between two nuts. But, on a city commuter I want to use “security” bolts. This would leave the rack attached with easily removable nuts.

Another variation on the stud idea… Use a security bolt kind of the “normal way” (from the outside, screwing in), but instead of tightening the bolt against the fork, use a nut on the inside edge of the rack flange to keep everything tight.

None of these are ideal, but the curved face over that eyelet is not ideal.

Somewhere else, someone wondered if that's supposed to be a drainage hole. On the inside of the fork, there's a drainage hole (circled in light blue) above the threaded eyelet (circled in green) -

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...8d22cfacb9.jpg

Why the drainage hole is on the inside edge, instead of the trailing edge… Who designed these dropouts???

The face around the eyelet is curved, not just angled and flat, so any kind of spacer/standoff with one end ground down would never be quite right.

I was almost thinking of using a "levelling washer", but that curved face kind of makes any sort of spacer kind of useless. And the smallest levelling washers I can find are M8.

Levelling washer -
https://www.mcmaster.com/mvC/Content...=ImageNotFound


For now, I'm leaning towards a variation of Troul's suggestion… Use a stainless security bolt of appropriate length, and use a nut to hold the rack-flange against the bolt-head. That tension (and some thread-lock, and/or a lock-washer; or maybe a nylon lock-nut) would prevent the bolt from unscrewing.

That would leave the bottom rack mounts using an M5 bolt as a short lever, which is not ideal… But the curved face of this eyelet seems to preempt any ideal solutions, and may even preempt any better solutions.

It took me a while to picture this in my head… Kind of like a volcano-shaped chunk of metal; a dome, with a hole going through it.

I'm not sure what that's called, which makes it hard to find. That might be better than nothing, with a nylon washer between it and the fork, and a spacer/standoff between it and the rack flange.

OTOH, I'm not sure if pairing that with a spacer/standoff would give any strength advantage over a "naked" M5 bolt that's longer than ideal. There's probably some strength advantage of a spacer/standoff taking up the space between two parallel surfaces, but without two parallel surfaces, I think there may not be any advantage to a spacer/standoff.

Just be aware it is a low initial cost Giant bike. I wouldn't put too much into it. It could be a fun project but they don't really do any touring stuff and probably have never really had that in mind. A lot of companies say let's put the mounts there and know they will never get used and putting the design time into making it all functional costs money and to make a cheap bike you can't do all of that. They followed that ideal as they usually do.

The washers probably would work but it could look janky. You could find a fine touring fork even ones in carbon but then again you have a frame that is low initial cost aluminum frame from Giant.

I'm not expecting it to be the world's best bike. The plan is to get 10+ years out of it as a city commuter and grocery bike.

I don't have too much invested in it, yet, so I'm open to suggestions for other aluminium frame/fork bikes that would lend themselves to being built up as a 700c, flat-bar, city commuter and grocery bike, with a 3x10 drive-train.

As of now, my only disappointment with this is the lower eyelets on the fork.

It's a nice enough bike, I think you're fine fiddling with it to get that rack to work as long as you're not putting crazy loads on it. Some weight in the front, more in the rear, no worries.

Here, we can see that the eyelet face is not just angled, it's curved. Nothing but Silly-Putty is going to sit flush with it.


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...939b1e4e43.jpg

I'd try to do that anyway, of course. But, on a grocery bike, there may be times when I push the rack's 18kg (40lb) rated limit. Front pannier bags can easily fit 5kg (11lb) of rice, or 6kg (13.25lb) of canned beans, each.

To some degree I'm just overthinking it. I'm sure plenty of people put front racks on this bike, and never even noticed this issue.

With a Tubus Tara rack, I think most of the load will be on the top bolts, and those eyelets are good; flat, perpendicular to the bolt, and I can probably get the rack's flanges flush, with no washers or spacers; no worries there. The load on the bottom eyelets will probably be less, but also partly pushing down from gravity, partly pushing back from the shape of the rack, and partly pushing forward when braking forces push the pannier bags' hooks against the rack. (Have I mentioned that I may be overthinking this?)

I'm just really dazzled by how stupidly this eyelet was designed into this fork.

It's quite dazzlingly stupid. You gotta try to screw something up that bad!

A bevel washer would work.

Giant sells a low-rider rack that might work (i.e., might be designed for precisely that application and might use custom-shaped mounting hardware at the dropout), though there's no telling from the one picture on their product page. Might be worth an email to their tech support with a couple of the photos showing the problem.

https://www.giant-bicycles.com/us/ra...tro-front-rack

Kind of… Kind of not…

Part of the purpose of a washer is to distribute the forces of fasteners over a larger area. Because the face of the eyelet is curved, even a bevel washer would concentrate the forces over two smaller areas. It would create two hot-spots. This could be partly alleviated with a nylon washer. So maybe an option would be a nylon washer against the fork, then a bevel washer, then a spacer/standoff, then a flat washer against the rack's mounting flange.

I've got one of those racks, from another bike (2022 model). Unless they have a special hardware kit for this fork (which I doubt), that rack is unimpressive (to be kind). In particular, the two haves of the rack are ambidextrous; there's no right-side or left-side. The mounting flanges are in the middle of the rails, not offset. This requires spacers (and introduces bending forces) where a rack with left/right offset flanges could be mounted flush against the eyelet faces.

After the weekend, I'll try to stop by an LBS where they'd either know if there's a special hardware kit for this fork, or they'll know where to get an official answer.

• Compatible with the following models:
  • Toughroad- 2016+
  • AnyRoad (Alloy version only)- 2017+
  • Escape series (With alloy fork only) 2017+

There's this review, from 4 years ago, on that page:Edit: The 2019 Escape 2 City Disk is a different frame/fork than the 2022 Cross City 2.

Edit 2: The Giant AU website says:Maybe there is a special hardware kit?? More likely, they just include normal spacers/standoffs, and no one notices or cares about the curved face over the bottom eyelet.

Well, these folks have spherical washers (maybe not really ideal for the curved surface) that go down to M6.
I've worked with this company for over 30 years. They have everything metric, and they know their product.
https://belmetric.com/washers/spherical-washers/
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2e18cffdb6.jpg