Rack opinion
 

I am new to the world of commuting on a bike and have been looking for a rack. Right now I am commuting on my 97 Specialized Hardrock with more "road oriented" tires on it.

I was looking around at racks and found the Transit TD-1 rack on sale at PB for 19.99 with an additional 20% off. Does anyone have any experience with these racks? It seems like a solid rack but there are no reviews on PB and some searching has turned up nothing on these particular racks.

Thanks

Edit: excuse my dumb typo in the title...its been a long day.

typo fixed.


Do you have disc brakes? If not look for a differ rack.
If so it looks like a decent rack for the typical load, probably not heavy duty.

Nope no disc brakes. Will it not fit a bike without disc brakes?

I used a rack quite similar to the TD-1 for some time. It served me well, without incident, and its design allowed for the perfect place to store my u-lock:

http://imgur.com/dfWRql.jpg

Recently I ordered a new rack for my new disc-braked bike and was sent this one by mistake. I decided to keep it and mount it on my other bike (the old rack was passed onto my daughter). It's a great rack, but a little pricey, and in all honesty is not any more useful than my old rack (but I haven't used the "spring" feature yet). Worst of all, I lost the nifty spot for my u-lock and now have to carry it like this:

http://imgur.com/yNuQBl.jpg

So... in other words... there are a lot of great racks out there, but that TD-1 will likely serve your needs just fine.

Sweet, thanks for the input guys. I figure at 20 bucks shipped its worth a shot.

If you are going to use panniers get one with dog-legged rear stays like irclean's, as it will prevent the bag swinging into thwe spokes.

The one I am looking at appears to the almost identical to the one pictured by irclean, so I think I should be okay to use panniers on it. The rear stays just dont look as dog legged as the ones on the above rack.

I went ahead and ordered it, with the team performance points it only cost me about 5 bucks. If it works, great, if not, im only out 5 bucks out of pocket.

I never knew they use dog legs when producing these things? Hm.

I've read about other's having this problem, but I've never experienced it with either rack. I attribute it to the fact that my pannier has a quality mounting system and a rigid back plate: http://www.arkel.ca/ca_e/all-categor...-bike-bag.html

Thanks for the link to the panniers, that was going to be my next question. I was looking for a quality pannier since I am a college student and carrying a laptop is usually an everyday occurrence.