Hey all-

My wife and I are doing our first RAGBRAI this year on our tandem 2012 Cannondale Road Tandem 2. I was wondering if there's any way to mount a front rack to the Fatty fork; there only seems to be eyelets for a fender and nothing else.

Thanks for any info!

The fender eyelets on the dropouts are used to mount the vertical rack supports and the fork center hole provides the mount for the stainless steel bracket. This is how I have my front rack on my Cannondale, albeit being mounted to a steel fork. However, the thicker fork blades may necessitate the use of a longer bolt with a spacer. This is the typical front rack mount, not to be confused with a lowrider rack mount. That entails brackets to grab the fork blades. Touring forks have threaded braze ons or through holes for lowriders on the fork blades mid points.

Is there a reason you want a front rack and not just a handlebar bag? Alternatively, why not a rear rack? Pretty sure all Cannondales have the needed braze-ons for quick rear rack mounting. My two do.

I hope this helps.

Thanks, that does help; I had forgotten spacers are a thing . I couldn't post a pic (haven't posted ten times yet), but the bike does have a back rack already and a pretty good handlebar bag. The idea for the front rack is to support us on tours where it's just us and we have to bring the camp stove, freeze-dried foods, and the most important piece of gear: the camp coffee canteen.

Yes, coffee is a must. I have a camp stove espresso machine that has turned a few heads. Although we haven't bicycle toured with it, we have been car camping in some remote places. When people see our double lattes with foam and powdered chocolate on top, they can't quite believe their eyes. I get the coffee thing!

I was in the process of doing the very same thing. Originally, the tandem had steel raked forks, but I wanted to upgrade to discs all round so got a set of Fatty tandem forks, these had no eyelets for a front low rider carrier so i got some clamps from Tubus that fitted on the fork legs.
These were ok, but not very aesthetically pleasing and despite protecting the fork legs with pieces of inner tube and tape, the bolts marked the paint work which caused water to penetrate and blister.
I got some solid aluminium bar and made a couple of brackets which I JB welded on, drilled and tapped the centre for the fixing bolt.
Just need to prep for paint and the jobs done.

We have this one on our 2011 edition.

https://www.axiomgear.com/products/r...disc-lowrider/

Wow that looks really nice! I have access to a welder myself...

I thought about TIG welding it but didnt want to risk putting too much heat into the blades and they becoming "softer" than they should.
Also thought about drilling the fork and tapping it out, again I didnt want to risk weakening the blades.
I've used JB Weld on similar projects that dont take too much load, they seem solid enough now

So painted the forks and assembled back together

Might help with Photos

That does look pretty nice!