simmonsgc

Yes. Based on an old Meral design.



Installed on my Miyata tourer:

-holiday76

Hey, listen. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (beer holder). All I'm saying is that if you love that bike you probably love that rack too. Consistency.

jj1091

Humor comes in many forms...

jj1091

I never learned any welding or brazing, your work looks like a professional job. Do you do that type of work for a living? Beautiful.

simmonsgc

No, but I have a good friend who taught me to TIG weld aluminum. He had a pile of scrap that I practiced on until I had some basic technique. Even now, I still have to spend some time with files and sandpaper before the joins are pretty. Thank you very much for the nice compliment. I hope to make a front bag rack for this Miyata too, maybe over the winter.

Sixty Fiver

I weighed it at 800 grams and call it the Portage, the double rail allows for an upper or lower mount for panniers and when you use the lower mount you can top load the rack with whatever you want and still access the bags.

This rack was also custom made for my Surly Pugsley which has offset chainstays which added a little challenge but once dfone the rack was plug and play and could be taken on and off in minutes with no adjusters needed.

It is a design I learned and adopted from my mentor... this one has a 4 inch span between the rails so if your bags need to sit higher to clear terrain or water hazards this is possible.

I do this for a living... these were built for a touring tandem with a normal span between the rails.



The front rack is a unique design that sets the weight of the bags behind the steering axis which aids stability and eliminates the fender stays.

\

Oddly enough, my touring bike still putters along with some vintage Blackburns that have refused to break... my wife's city bike also wears one of my custom racks that was built to accommodate a shopping pannier.

jj1091

Here's the final modifications for my touring bags to go with my racks.



A small bracket to hold my tail-light and reflector.


1/4" plywood stiffeners inside the bags to hold them steady. I put screws through the plywood liner into the rails to secure the bags to the rear rack.


Total cost since I bought the bike is $27.67 - the 3 bags from a thrift store, 2 lights from Dollar Tree, new cables and a can of green spray paint from WalMart, a set of small bungee cords from the flea market. Everything else was repurposed stuff from the garage or my parts bin. Still need some fenders for it to be a proper touring bike.

jj1091

One week already. 115 miles on them. 2 trips of 40 miles, loaded. Still going....

Prowler 

Great update on the racks!! I often create something just cuz I can and I don't know it wont work. I recently read that one key to our building the Trans-continental railroad (Union Pacific and Central Pacific) was that American Engineers had a "healthy disdain for authority". You could not tell them "it wont work, you cannot do it that way, it will fail". They just did it anyway. General W.T. Sherman called it "creative insubordination". Love that one.

Keep working them and keep us posted.

-holiday76

Pics of bike loaded? You have a beard, right? I hope so.

I wouldnt be worried about how long they last. I'd be more worried about how they fail when they do. We might never hear from you again!

jj1091

You can imagine being 800 miles from civilization in the 1850's, and needing some parts you don't have, and stopping work puts 1000 people sitting on their rears, so you just create a solution, maybe it's a temporary fix, but, it just might be a new permanent solution that's yet not been tried. I've found, often, that what stops people from getting things done is an attitude that what they need is somewhere else, or some-when else. I challenge myself by saying, "Go into the garage and make yourself some touring racks. Don't go to the store to buy anything." And, if you use only what is available, and consider all the options (you only get this one by eliminating time as a constraint), then you will come up with a solution. Need a jockey wheel and don't have one, you CAN make one out of some old junk. Will it last forever? Nope. Neither will that store-bought one, no matter what the cost. Creativity needs to be made to happen, the greater the challenge, the more the mind gets a workout.


Will do. Unfortunately, my Simplex plastic derailleur took a spin around the spokes and made itself into this most wonderful shape. I've got half of a Shimano SIS and less than half of a Simplex, gonna see what I can make out of it....

jj1091

Pic of the bike, loaded.




Pic of me, loaded. (was it that obvious?)