frdfandc

Out of all the comments posted, not one person has brought this up.

With a rack on the rear of a full suspension, you're going to lose all of the rear travel because it's tied to the main triangle and the rear triangle, effectively making your F/S bike a hardtail. If you use a seat post mounted rack, you'll lose most of the rear suspension travel due to rear tire upward travel directly contacting with the rack as soon as you start hitting the chunk.

Best bet, like mentioned before, is a gravel bike with a suspension fork, and slow your roll when you're in the rougher stuff.

cyccommute 

No one has brought it up because it isn’t something that happens. The rear triangle of any full suspension bike isn’t directly connected to the front triangle other than through a pivot mechanism. Racks like the Aeroe Spider and Thule Pack ‘n’ Tour, attach to part of the swing arm but don’t attach to the main frame. My YBB (post 18) has a rear rack that attaches to the rear triangle below the suspension member but isn’t attached to the main triangle. What you are suggesting assumes that people are pretty stupid.

Well isn’t that just a hardtail mountain bike with drop bars?

frdfandc

Every rack I've ever installed, except for seast post racks, tie the rear triangle to the front with struts. unless they make a rack that doesn't need the support to keep the rack from moving for and aft.

More efficient than a mountain bike on most of what's going to be ridden. It's always going to be a compromise. Do you want efficiency, or capability. Can't have both. Just like the following. Cheap, light, strong. Pick two.

cyccommute 

No, the rack attaches to the seat stays. On a full suspension bike, the “seat stays” are really part of the swing arm. For the full suspension Specialized below, I’ve marked the pivots and show how a rack (green poorly drawn bits) could be attached to the “seat stay” of the swing arm. I wouldn’t necessarily do a rack on this kind of bike however if you were so inclined, it wouldn’t be impossible.




I would…and have…opt for bikepacking bags. This bike isn’t the best choice for more than much more than a 3 night trip because the space is very limited due to the constraints.



This bike has a rack fitted on it and it is a dual suspension, albeit a limited travel one. It’s not meant to spring on big hits like a longer travel duallie but it does take an edge off.



You can see that the rack is attached below the shock unit so as to allow for free movement. Mounting any other way would be quite dumb.



It is my off-road bikepacking bike that can go a bit longer (closer to a full week) than the other bike.




As for racks that actually can be mounted to dual suspension bikes, a couple of examples are the Thule and the Aeroe Spider. Both are mounted without any fore/aft bracing.

That depends on where the bike is going to ridden. It also depends on what you mean by “efficiency”. A mountain bike with mountain bike tires…even one with suspension…is more efficient on pavement than something derived from a road bike is on dirt. A mountain bike may be somewhat slow on pavement (but not nearly as slow as some make it out to be) but it will never encounter pavement that it can’t handle. A gravel bike can quickly run into something it can’t handle on dirt where the mountain bike would just keep going.

Once you reach the point where you need suspension on a gravel bike, you might as well just go with a mountain bike. Mountain bikes started out rigid and went to suspension when the rigid bike was found lacking. Gravel bikes are coming to the same conclusion so why bother reinventing the wheel.

frdfandc

Every F/S bike I've seen, ridden, or sold does not have rack provisions. Even in cases where the rack is secured to the seat stays, if it can even be done, will severely limit rear travel suspension. Which makes having F/S moot.

Either way, it's not something that was designed to have a rack put on it and would void any warranty and could cause premature failure of the rear triangle. And I can pretty much guarantee that most shops will not install a rack on a FS bike.

OP needs to make a compromise. Efficiency or capability. Like I said before, can't have both.

Regardless of what anyone has to say, OP would ultimately need a custom bike made to get all the features he wants. Which would be extremely expensive.

And a soft tail is very different than a FS bike. No pivots on a soft tail. It's pretty much a rigid bike with maybe 1-2 inches of travel. Just enough to take the edge off uneven terrain. Way less than even the shortest travel FS bike on the market.

big john

See post #12.

frdfandc

I've been riding since I was 11. I'm 47 now, and I have never seen a bike design like that before. Went back and read through some of the posts again about that bike. Not surprised it's no longer being made. Looks overly complicated and probably extremely difficult to tune.

big john

I'm 69 and this thread is the first time I have seen a bike like that. I don't think suspension tuning is an issue with it.

cyccommute 

Just a note: It would be helpful if you would quote the post you are replying to. Makes it easier to follow.

You are correct in that full suspension bikes don’t have rack provisions. Most mountain bikes don’t have provisions for racks. But that doesn’t mean that enterprising people can’t make them work. Aeroe even shows a full suspension bike with one of their racks on it



You can even find a fair number of people out there using them for bikepacking. The rack I have on my Moots is on a full suspension bike and it doesn’t render the rear suspension “moot”.

It’s not like people are putting road touring loads on these bikes. Frankly, I don’t carry that much on my rack mostly because I don’t want to huck that kind of load up to 12,000 feet on rocky roads. But I also don’t use that kind of bike for travel that lasts weeks on end because bikepacking bags are really bad at carrying stuff. The load has to be distributed in weird ways because items fit in the out of the way spaces due to the shape of the bag. The load is carried far too high which throws the handling off.

Of course compromises have to be made. But all things aren’t equal. A mountain bike is efficient enough for touring on pavement but a gravel bike isn’t as capable as a mountain bike for really rough off-road travel. But sysrq doesn’t appear to want to do rugged off-road travel. A rigid touring bike and some road awareness would probably do better for the application sysrq has described that a full suspension bike would. Note that I said “touring bike”. Gravel bikes make for poor touring bikes because there are too many compromises made for the racing aspects of gravel biking.

Beg to differ. As an owner of a soft tail, it does have a functioning suspension. It has a suspension fork on the front and a suspension point on the back. It doesn’t matter what the length of travel is to designate that the bike has movement of the rear wheel when impacted. Yes my full suspension bike (different from the YBB) has more travel but it has less travel than a downhill bike. Does that mean that the cross country bike isn’t full suspension. It’s a matter of degree. 40mm of travel is enough to take the edge off but the fact that it travels to take the edge off still makes it suspended and, ergo, a dual suspension mountain bike.

PeteHski

What compromises are those?

CrimsonEclipse

Touring tended to have mountain bike characteristics with extra mounting points, so it's a direct evolution
Gravel is a road bike to doing the same thing from a different direction.
Touring with a gravel bike is a two step evolution.
Take a road bike, make it stronger for gravel, make it stronger for bags.

Think of it like taking a F150 and lowering it.
Yeah it can make turns but there are already designed purpose vehicles that are much more suited to turning.

cyccommute 

Short wheelbase. Steep angles. Short chainstays making mounting panniers difficult without kicking them all the time. Lighter frame set not optimized for load carrying. Etc.

PeteHski

I certainly wouldn’t have any issues with Gravel bike geometry for touring, but I’ll have to take your word about difficult pannier mounting as I have no experience of them.

PeteHski

You have lost me there. My mountain bike has nothing in common with a touring bike. My endurance road bikes are much closer, but lack additional mounting points, which I often see on gravel bikes.