Since I am going to be fitting another bike for my son to tour with what would be a good choice for racks?
I am going to use Tubus on my new Sherpa 30 when it arrives but since my boy will only be going on shorter tours (3-5 days maybe 300-500k) he doesn't really need a super heavy-duty rack like the Tubus.
I used blackburn aluminum racks for over a decade when I was touring back in the 80's. I had some long rides on a heavy bike and never suffered any type of failure ( I even used a spring loaded Pletcsher on my first tours).
Anyone ever been let down by some of the lighter weight offerings?

To be honest, I've never broken a rack of any kind. My old touring bike even has the original 1983 aluminum rack from Miyata on it and it's not showing any wear. A couple of good cheap ones are the Delta MegaRack Universal (adjustable for height) or the Old Man Mountain White Rock. They are both around $40. For a light load, I'd suggest using a front rack too. The bike is easier to control. Put all the load on the front and you won't have issues up to around 30 lbs.

I would also suggest the Axiom line of racks and panniers for a great value

I've also toured with a Pletscher, but I don't think I'd go that route now. I've toured for years with Blackburns - Expedition in back, Lowrider in front. No trouble, although I did have a lot of whippiness at speed with a load. I don't know if it was the racks or my old 26.5 inch Nashbar touring bike with the 1" frame tubes. Now I have a new LHT and put Surly racks on it. I haven't taken it on tour yet. I'm hoping the whippiness is gone.

I would feel comfortable with Blackburn. Nashbar seems to have taken the Lowrider design and copied it exactly. I don't know about the quality under the Nashbar label.

I'd echo what cyccommute said. Use racks both front and rear and put a good portion of the weight in front. You'll break fewer spokes with the weight up there, and I think the bike handles better with the weight distributed fore and aft.

> Nashbar seems to have taken the Lowrider design and copied it exactly. I don't know about the quality under the Nashbar label.

We used them on our TA and they are fine. No issues at all. It seems to be a good setup at a reasonable price.

Then low cost racks it is.
Blackburn or Nashbar, or maybe used.
Blackburn in the early 80's was considered high quality (and expensive) equipment.
I have no idea why I think different nowdays. Maybe I have more money or maybe I read to much.
My boy wants front and rear racks and the bike has fitting for lowrider racks in front anyways.

Go with new. Like I said I've never broken a rack but a new one is cheap insurance.

I have two cheap racks, one is a Schwinn and I have no idea what brand the other was. My only problem is that the hardware they came with was garbage. I knew that after the first one, so I just replaced all the screws and fittings with stainless steel, except the braze-on bolts, which were the only rustproof fasteners in the whole Schwinn kit.

Otherwise I've been quite happy with my bargain racks. I would also recommend you buy new, sometimes you can't tell if a used product has been bent and fixed, which can lead to weaknesses.

Often, you have to bend or flex new alu racks to get them to fit on the bike. Nothing wrong with this-- I doubt it hurts the rack in any way. As long as all the bolts holding the rack on are tight and the rack can't sway around, racks generally don't fail.

But I'm not sure installing a used rack on a new bike is all that great of an idea. You'll bend the rack again-- not in the same way it was bent during the first install. This may weaken the rack. With that said, I've used racks I found in the trash and none of them failed.

One thing to remember is that almost all racks are held on to the bike frame by only a few allen bolts. I'm pretty sure you could take a bunch of racks-- sulry, jandd, tubus, no-name cheapies, load then down with hunderds of pounds, and the allen screws that hold the rack to the frame would fail long before the racks themselves.

So I'm not so sure pricey heavy duty racks are all great of value.