StephenH

I've got a Planet Bike Eco rack laying around, and went to fit it on my Lynskey GR250 gravel bike. Fits okay, but when it's mounted, the trunk bag is right up under the saddle. So a rack with the attachment point farther forward (to shift the rack back) would be advantageous. But, I don't recall ever seeing this as a published dimension. Are all racks the same in this dimension, or is there some rack that would work better here?
I assume the same question would come up in checking heel strike on larger panniers, but I haven't got that far yet.

indyfabz

Racks come in many shapes a sizes. Preventing heel strike is usually accomplished my positioning the panniers farther back on the rack.

Tourist in MSN

Some Tubus and Racktime racks have technical drawings available.

For example I have a Racktime Addit rack that I have used on my Lynskey Backroad.
https://www.racktime.com/fileadmin/u.../Addit_1.0.pdf

And I have a Tubus Logo that I have used on my other touring bikes.
https://www.tubus.com/fileadmin/user...hinterradtraeg

There are LOTs of rack companies out there, not sure which others have good dimensional data available.

I am not familiar with the specific Lynskey you have, my Backroad has the rack mounting points quite high up above the axle, up higher than most other touring bikes which puts the rack quite high up. Unfortunately, that is the way Lynskey designed it, I would have prefered to have the rack down lower.

As Indyfabz noted, most of the better quality panniers have rack attachments that can be shifted fore and aft to be able to move the panniers to get them as far forward as practical without heel strike.

Without a photo of your situation, hard to say much else.

indyfabz

Yeah. Photo would help immensely.

Elvo

How about putting it on a front rack?

tombc

Axiom makes racks that offset rearward

Baboo

I’m probably totally off base on this but a picture I found of your bike shows the rack mounts about 2 inches above the axle on the seat stay, this puts them in front of the axle quite a ways. Maybe there is a proprietary rack for it from Lynskey, but I doubt many racks would work on this arrangement. It puts the rack forward and high. As another poster recommended an axle mount rack might work.

dualresponse

A quick google search really shows the extent of the lynskey rack mounting problem (at least on some of the earlier frames).



Another quick google search showed there are some rearward mounted racks out there.

https://www.blackburndesign.com/p/gr...wE#pid=7096667

If you click on this link, a rack shows up. If you scroll to the left, it has some dimensions.

When I clicked on a lynskey frame, it looked like it had two rack mounts holes on each side (4 total on the bottom). My initial thought was to jury rig a surly front adaptor off the 4 lynskey rack holes to create a rearward adaptor point to mount off of. I would mount the slotted portion of the surly adaptors over the lynskey 4 frame mounts, angling the brackets as downward and rearward as possible, and then mount the rack off the lower bolt holes in the surly bracket.
..or something like that....
https://www.treefortbikes.com/Surly-...RoCQMsQAvD_BwE

Fortunately, both options seem relatively cheap to experiment with. Good luck.

indyfabz

My Nitto Big rack on my LHT. Not for those on a tight budget.

hokiefyd 

This topic interests me, because I have a similar issue on my daughter's GT mountain bike. It has only a single pair of lower rack mount points, and they're on the seat stay above the welded dropout -- so about 3" above and forward of the axle...putting the rack fairly close to the saddle. I like Axiom's solution, but I like the Topeak MTX series racks because I have a few of their MTX bags, so I'm trying to get the Topeak rack to work.

I, too, have tried to come up with a solution using similar hardware. I think the challenge with most racks (and the Lynskey looks similar) is their single lower mounting bolt hole. Without a two hole system like Axiom is using, the stand-off struts or risers will want to rotate down under the weight. If the front mounting struts are not done carefully, I imagine the two sets of struts could form a parallelogram, allowing the rack to move rearward and down under weight.

I think those Surly plates to which you've linked could work if an additional bolt hole could be drilled in the rack's vertical tube. One could then mount those plates so the two bolt holes are aligned vertically and the length of the plate extends forward (forming an "L" at the bottom of the rack's vertical tube). It still probably wouldn't be ideal, but it might work. I imagine drilling an additional mounting point in the vertical tube will weaken it to some degree.

dualresponse

The rack mounts I linked to would only work if the lynsky frame still has the two lower mounting holes on each side of the frame. That would make the adaptor stable. I get the idea the points might "slide" in the slots, and that might need to be addressed. The rear rack would then attach onto the surly adapter in the same way it would attach to a regular frame. The other option for frames with only two lower mounts (one on each side) would require more jury rigging depending on the specific rack design to prevent the parallelogram effect you mention.

hokiefyd 

I see what you're saying. Yes, I agree. For the OP, that Blackburn Grid 1 looks like a good solution. I'm thinking about that too, though it'd require me to move away from the Topeak MTX ecosystem to more universal pannier bags.

Tourist in MSN

It becomes a question of how much weight do you want to put on your rear rack. This being the touring forum, likely a lot of weight.

There are racks out there that may fit, but a lot of the racks designed more for commuting might not be good for a touring kind of load.

For example, I got lucky and picked up a used Nitto R14 rack at a swap meet for pennies on the dollar. I never would have bought it at the new price, but it fits nicely on my Lynskey Backroad. I initially bought it for a different bike, but the stays were too short for that bike, maybe the stays were designed for a 26 inch bike? But, I decided to put it on my Backroad instead. With a weight rating of something near 6 kg, I do not use it for touring, it is not even close to having the capacity needed for that. Instead use a Racktime Addit (as I mentioned in a post above) for my panniers for touring. But the Nitto, although heavier than it looks is a great small rack for use around home.



My gym bag pannier fits nicely on it too.

StephenH

Thanks for the comments. I just now got back in town and will take me a while to go through them.
I rode from the beach to my house in the Dallas area riding motel-to- motel. Made do with a big Carradice bag and smaller front bag.
More info later.