RIP Jim Blackburn
 

Condoleances to his family and friends:( may he RIP.

33 years of retirement. Pretty awesome…

Loved my Blackburn rack and water bottle holders. Just a great re-engineering of stuff.

Interesting. I didn't know he was local here in the Bay Area - Los Gatos, CA to be precise.
I actually have three of his wrap-around front racks. They are very high quality and sturdy.
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Rest in piece Mr. Blackburn. Your racks were prized and imitated.

Jim Backburn was another bike industry person that changed things. Prior to Blackburn racks, there were Eclipse or Pletcher. The Blackburn racks were sturdy enough for touring, the rack was triangulated side to side. It was a clever design and all welded construction made it stiff. The they followed that up with low rider racks and bottle cages. Good stuff.

At some point, Jim Blackburn sold the company and their products. "Blackburn" named products are sold in places like Walmart. I've got a Blackburn pump and tool kit. Both are excellent values. So, Bell sports is doing a decent job of keeping the name and quality going.

Condolences to his family, I’ve got a lot of his stuff, all made before he sold out to Bell. Trainer, workstands, pump, etc, never an issue, will all easily last me.
Tim

RIP Sir, your contribution cannot be overstated.

Hey I'm a Blackburn fan too, but we mustn't forget there were always better racks available if you could afford it. Jack Taylor, Singer, Herse and all the other French constructeurs, plus the Japanese who emulated them, made tubular steel racks that were stiffer and stronger. Solid metal rods can't compete with tubes for strength-to-weight ratio, that's elementary math. Once Jim Merz started making his (when was that BTW?), everything else was immediately second best, though I think you had to buy a Merz frame to get one.

Blackburn's history says '75, but I never saw one until after my trans-con '76 ride. Did anyone actually get one in time for Bikecentennial? Might have been vaporware for a time before the retail pipeline had them. One of my tanscon companions alnd I worked in a big well-connected bike shop, so I think if the Blackburn had been available, we'd have known about it. Maybe not.

I have a Bike World magazine article from '76 where the writer said he'd wanted a Merz rack for "several years", so that probably puts Merz earlier than Blackburn. That article implies you could buy just the racks, for an existing frame — maybe Jim can chime in on whether he actually ever did that.

I made my first tubular CrMo racks in '78, not influenced by Merz because I hadn't seen one yet, I was copying Taylor/Herse/Singer. But I gladly used Blackburn racks on several of my bikes over the years because building a custom one-off CrMo rack is a daunting amount of work, and I'm lazy. I think even the raw tubing to make a rack cost more than a ready-to-ride Blackburn.

Pre-Blackburn, for those of more modest means, there were the Karrimor and Tonard brazed-steel racks "mass" produced by small shops in England, available in the US though distribution was poor, you couldn't just walk into any LBS. The Tonard was sold in the US by Hartley Alley's Touring Cyclist shop in Colorado, rebranded as the TC rack. I still have a couple of those, rode across the continent in '76 with one. I had to mail order it of course.

Then Bruce Gordon came along with his (when? I forget.), which unlike the Merz were adjustable to fit more than just the one frame they were made for. Expensive, but probably something like 3 to 5x as strong as a Blackburn and way stiffer.

Anyone remember the joke ad Gordon put out, that called Blackburn racks "Rockburn" and said they were stone-age? Might have been produced by his then-girlfriend Sky Yeagher (sp?), who made the brilliant 'Welcome to the Future' robot factory spoof (page 1). ('Welcome to the Future' page 2)

Ah, here it is:
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...70253e6919.jpg

I hope this is not seen as disrespectful towards Mr. Blackburn, whom I respect deeply. He will be missed.

JM027 that he built for himself was built in August 1974 I believe so he started them before anybody else it would seem.

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RR150 was built for a cross country tour using Blackburn's in April 1978, I think the customer said he couldn't or didn't want spend the extra $$$$$$ for custom as they had become very spendy by then.

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RIP Jim. I still have two Blackburn racks and countless bottle cages. One of the racks is on my commuter bike that I hang a modern backpack that converts into a pannier. Timeless design and I will always pick them up whenever they cross my path.

For me, the LowRider rack was a game changer. A rack you could put on a fix gear and still be able to go up hard hills loaded, out of the saddle; tugging the bars, twisting the frame and rocking the bike with every muscle you had. And the only change in bike handling was that it was (however much you were carrying) harder.

Yes, those racks weren't perfect, Every singe one I owned eventually broke at the dropout. Not dangerous; I usually learned about it when I went to remove the rack. The Jadd (sp) and another post-Blackburn rack have each outlasted several Blackburns and are going strong. But without Blackburn, they probably wouldn't exist.

Not everyone could say they left a mark in this world. Jim certainly could though.

Adieu.

Were the 'flat deck' Blackburn racks made when Mr. Blackburn still owned the company? I've had a couple of them over the years, and, although I'm not a long-distance tourist, for a utility, day- or credit-card-touring bike, they'd always be on my list. And I sure wouldn't kick one off of a bike that already had one one it.

Solid, well built stuff. The only ones I've seen broken were crashed or otherwise brutalized. (And not many of those.) And, if the one on the Fuji is typical of the breed, they take powder coat pretty well, too. Which does not suck.

Tailwinds, Mr. Blackburn. There's a lot of bikes out there that have been made better by something you made.

--Shannon

Me, too. I used a Pletcher rear rack when I started touring as a teenager. Still remember high speed shimmy going down Rabbit Ears Pass. In adulthood I finally got a pair of LowRiders. What a huge improvement! Low center of gravity, uses the front wheel which has no dishing and is thus stronger, balances load front and back to improve handling. Riding downhill was significantly safer.

I need to take this out for a memorial ride.
Cannondale with Blackburn racks and cages.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...394afecbae.jpg

I used a Blackburn light weight low rider rack on our Albany-Burlington-Lake George tour last August, which included a very nasty section called Pratt Road. Worked great.

Also installed a Blackburn short front rack (a behind the fork model) on the Columbine this afternoon. Perfect.

Thanks, Mr. Blackburn, for your design work and products. RIP.

Thanks for posting this. I've had and still have numerous Blackburn rear racks from the standard silver to the black Expedition and have toured with those in combo with the bolt through lowrider with no hoop, lowrider with hoop and FR-1 platform rack with no issues. His products definitely changed the marketplace and fueled a lot of touring.

There is such a beautiful flow to his racks. Thank you Mr Blackburn.

I have what I assume is a really old Jim Blackburn rack that Flog00 gave me- unfortunately I don't have any pix of it and he took his down.

This is a pretty cool Blackburn rack thread: https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...ilarities.html

I bet somebody out there knows when the branding on his racks hanged from "Jim Blackburn" to "Blackburn"?

Sad to see that Jim Blackburn passed away. It seems like he got to have fun after he retired!

I met Jim around 1977, he shared an industrial rental unit with Mike Sinyard, Specialized Bicycle founder, in Campbell California. At that time Blackburn was selling the front and rear racks that places the load above the wheels, and bottle cages. He sold a lot of bottle cages back then. Both companies were small, one or two employees each I think. Mike was a good friend from when he started Specialized in 1974, I visited him from time to time. I rode into the joint warehouse after riding from Portland on my new Merz touring bike with the first low rider rack I designed and made. I rode into the shop, Blackburn came over to look at my bike. He looked closely but didn't say anything. Several months later he comes out with his first low rider Blackburn aluminum rack! The load position was the same, but the function was vastly inferior. He was, however, a much better businessman than me and sold a ton of them.

Here are some shots showing my rack designs and where this all started. The first shot is a ride I did in 1964, riding from Portland to Denver, using a Plecher rear rack. It worked but left a lot to be desired, flexy and not very strong, made for carrying a lunch pair to work. The size of the top was a good starting point though. Several years later I rode from Portland to Panama, using a Rayleigh Pro! I designed and made front and rear racks that used 4130 CrMo tubing, clamped onto the mounting points. These racks were very stiff and strong, although weighed only a bit more than the Plecher rack. The magazine article explains the benefits. The last 2 photos show Paul and Michael Sylvester at the start of a one year ride starting in Portland, across the USA at a very fast pace, continuing in Europe covering thousands of miles. Paul's bike included my low rider design. This ride was cycle camping, requiring careful thought to reduce weight. Almost all the load is placed in this front setup, very nice handling and stable. The rack is clamped onto the front fork as shown, this fastening method was used for all of my rack designs. It equals the strength and stiffness of brazing the rack in place, but with the convenance of removal if needed. The only drawback is they have to be custom made for each bike. There is no way to make any adjustable rack that mounts as well with the same light weight. I did make these racks for bikes other than my Merz frames. I don't think there are any racks that work better. I never knew about French and Japanese low rider racks that were around before I came to the same conclusion, put the main load centered on the front axle. My racks were stronger and stiffer than these earlier designs, but were impossible to produce commercially viably. After I closed my shop in Portland to work with Mike Sinyard in 1982, Bruce Gordon started making touring racks to fill the void. His racks were adjustable, a requirement for the market. His were much better, but much more money, than Blackburn racks. Jim Merz
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Jim, what are those weird things on the backs of your bikes?

They look like inflated inner tubes, but why in hell would anybody do that?

--Shannon


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Back in those days, clincher tires had wire beads. They didn't fold! Jim

Perhaps this wasn't common back then, however, clincher or "wire-on" tires could be "folded" down like a bandsaw blade. Typically into three loops. It could also have to been because the older wire beads were heavier and less flexible than the tires of the later 70's and early 80's before Kevlar beads.

Hey, Jim. If anyone would be an expert on this it is you. As a machinist, cyclist frame builder, tourist and hanging out with Mike Sinard and the company that was innovating tires at the time. If they could fold (or loop) back then, you would have done it. So, what was different? Or was this just a bad practice that some tourist, bike catalog companies and idiots like me did? Keep in mind that I didn't keep it pretzeled up for a month.

Sorry for the tangent. The racks look great Jim. And they look to be handling a lot of weight.

That's a darned good question; I just dug out the aluminum rack I picked up from the bike co-op for $1; someone had painted it very thickly with purple paint. It's open in the center and is stamped "jim blackburn". Maybe I'll get it sandblasted.

Oh too bad about his death!

If his racks were not the first good, stiff racks, maybe they were the first mass-marketed ones. I was selling Pletscher racks by the dozen a week, and then came the Blackburns. We were impressed! They were not terribly expensive, and maybe that was the secret. I still use the one I bought in 1979 or so, on one of my bikes! It was on the bike I took on my 3-month tour in Europe.