This looks similar to the no-weld CETMA rack that empellavega made (link) but I'd say it's different enough that I think it deserves its own thread.

https://blog.makezine.com/archive/200...teur_rack.html


**Pic is hotlinked for your pleasure**

I like the u bolts on the forks for stability. I'd say that type of steel (used for mounting shelves) is cheap and easily available for most folks. Probably easier to drill holes without a drill press too.

One word of caution with this design........
It will require regular retightening of the fasteners 'cause they will work loose due to the lighter
weight shelving brackets.

Loctite is your friend.

How's the weight?

Not in this case. The metal used is to lightweight to hold clamping force due to crush.

More importantly, how much can it hold?

I use lock nuts with nylon inserts when I bolt together bike stuff. They work great as long as you put them on and leave them alone. repeated fastening and removing of this type of nut will render it uesless as a "lock". I've never had one come loose and they don't really cost much more than standard nuts. I find loctite to be hit-or-miss.

Nylon insert lock nuts-

After reading the same article on Bikecommuters.com concerning Ann Rappaports' DIY Porteur rack using the shelf standards. I thought "what a neat idea". So off I go the Home Depot to check out the materials to make myself one. Grabbing two or three lengths of the shelf standards. I thought about how heavy they felt. So I walk around looking at other materials and I notice Aluminum angle iron sitting there. Pick it up and notice how much lighter it was than the shelf standards. So I get that and some electric conduit to fabricate some struts. And this is what I came up with. Using pop rivets to join the aluminum together.





It works OK for light loads. I gave it a weight test using a concrete block and the struts didn't hold up so well. I think the P clamps had something to do with that. I'm going to try re-fabricating the struts to fit into the wheel axles like the Cetma's do. We'll see if that makes a difference. Since the pictures were taken I've also added a cross strut going from the fork to the rack strut for extra bracing.

It looks like it would shift left-right too much with any heavy load.
Also those pipe clamps.... if you tighten them much, they'll crimp the fork blades.

Better I'd think would be to run the two struts from the handlebars all the way down to the front axles, and bolt the shelf to them. Get rid of the two pipe-clamp things entirely, they wouldn't be needed.
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These homemade rack will never, ever, hold much weight side to side due to simple inertia.
Any weight in motion wants to stay in motion. The metal AND THE JOINTS are not rigid enough
to damp & supress the inertia of a side to side load. This is where welding can win the day.

IMO these racks are more of a danger and trouble that they could ever be worth from a simple
engineering stand point. For this application it's welded rod or forget it.

I tend to agree with this, basically.
You see a lot of threads asking how to build racks (and especially trailers) out of "whatever junk you have lying around", but it's not going to hold together well, and it's most likely to fail while you're carrying a heavy load.
If you plan on never carrying anything breakable, maybe that will work for you.
It won't for me.

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To be picky I would suggest using smaller steel tubing, not rod (heavier but not as stiff) or aluminum (difficult to weld well).

Also I would warn you that making your own rack is usually not a way to save any money. Even if you regard your labor as "free", the cost of decent materials and welding will cost more than a store-bought rack probably would. The main reason to DIY is if you can't buy something that will work for what you want to do.
~

This is why I keep advocating that all DIYer's should buy themselves a welder! I have a lot of tools but hands down my welder is my favorite. Mine is nothing fancy- a 115V flux-core wire feed welder. It cost about $400 at Northern Tool. I also have an auto-darkening mask, a couple angle grinders, and a metal cutting chop saw. [oh how I lust for a metal cutting bandsaw as well]

Not that there is anything wrong with nut-n-bolt construction but welding is just so much more versitile and there are a lot of great application for utility cycling improvements.

This is my home made front rack (welded):


And the hitch mechanism for my trailer too:


(I also welded the axle for the trailer but I have no pics to share)

Allow me to comment on your post.......
You are oh so correct about welding as a superior method of joining parts together. Welding
has strength that all other methods of fastening can never match.

That said, one needs a place to weld which is the down fall for most. I would like to own a
welder and could easily afford one,BUT I could never recover the cost of ownership wiith my
very low usage of said welder. In other words, a welder for me is a.....waste of money.

I resolve my needs with savvy shopping and blackbelt pricing and I seldom shop new.

YMMV

I think you are looking at this all wrong...

Let me pose a question to you: Do you own a set of channel lock pliers?

Assuming the answer is yes; How often do you use them?

Assuming the answer is less than once a month; How do you justify owning something that you use this infrequently?

The answer of course is that pliers are a tool and although you may not use them every day; they eventually earn their keep (in this case by allowing you to tighten a leaky pipe without havingto call a plumber).

A welder is the same thing; a tool. No, you won't save four or five hundred dollars on the first thing you weld to justify the purchase price but over time as you fix a lamp here, weld a bike trailer there, and so on; eventually the welder will have paid for itself and then some. I survived for 20+ years without needeing to weld anything but since I've owned a welder I've found at least 1-2 projects a month that were made possible or at least simplified by owning one.

Money spent on a tool is rarely money wasted.

Can one rent shop space? That would seem like something people would want to do once in a while.

Kind of a straw dog argument. I for instance use my channel lock pliers about once a week, when I bought them I was working as a mechanic and used them daily. Furthermore the pliers cost something like $20 while a decent welder is more like $500. $20 is pocket money, $500 is not, at least to me.

Then there is the point that pliers fit in the kitchen drawer (mine are in a roll around tool cabinet left over from my mechanicing days in the kitchen actually), I am not likely to keep a welder in my kitchen (I do have a drill press there so maybe I woud, but most folks wouldn't). Although I keep telling my self I ought to buy one of those little Oxy/Mapp Gas brazing torches that only cost $50 or so.

The long winded point of all this is that whether a tool is worth it depends on several things like:

Can you afford it?
Do you have some place to store it?
How much will you use it, realistically?
And do you have some place to use it (often a problem for us apartment dwellers)?

It is not a simple, "It's a tool, so it is worth it", proposition.

In large cities that is sometimes and option.

Also sometimes it is worthwhile to consider sharing expensive tools with friends; Either via co-ownership, or a "I buy the welder, you buy the paint spray rig, and we can borrow off each other" bais.

Another option is, "You provide the space, I will provide the tools, and we will both use them".

Yet another one is that often people doing things need a helping hand, if you hang around them and are willing to get your hands dirty helping out, they will usually let you borrow their tools or even do the work for you in return.

SUPER old thread, i apologize for pulling a Lazarus on it...



pictures of said drill press in kitchen? always good to have ammunition for when my projects spill over to rooms other than the basement. "but honey... THIS guy has a drill press in the kitchen! i'm not doing that (yet)!"

That's not a drill press! It's my drink mixer.

Back on topic...I built my own porteur and used an old aluminum lawn chair frame for the struts. They even had the holes for mounting on the axle ready for use. It was easy to cut to the right length with a plumber's tubing cutter. Look for older lawn chairs because the aluminum should be thicker.

No wife to complain. The drill press is currently under the kitchen table. It used to be on top of the tool chest, but there is a computer farm there now. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say the kitchen is long and narrow; the shop area is on the end that apparently was intended for a washer and dryer, and the food prep area is at the other end with the kitchen table in the middle. When you live in a one bedroom apartment you have to use the rooms for multiple duties. I usually do put things away when not using them and keep the place fairly neat.