On 9/18/2020 2:05 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, September 18, 2020 at 9:57:27 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/17/2020 9:00 PM, jbeattie wrote:
Rather than riding in smoke (which I will still do a little tonight), I've been working on bikes and ebikes. I also bought a bunch of bike stuff including a rack -- attention Frank -- a rack for my commuter.
Congratulations!
My commuter is a warranty replacement CAADX with oddly placed fender bridge bolts: https://tinyurl.com/y4j7yx63
Yeah, that's dumb. They ranked creativity above utility. It's from the
same school of thought that produces these things:
https://www.trendhunter.com/slidesho...vative-bicycle
I think the idea was to eliminate the brake/fender bridge to create ridiculous amounts of clearances. I'm assuming the bosses are strong enough to support a rack. It seems solid.
So, I bent some SS brackets to create stay mounts for my super-cool light weight rack. https://www.wiggle.com/tortec-ultralite-rear-rack. Cheap and rigid and good to 50lbs -- but note that there are no lower hook-spots for the paniers. Ooops.
I still have the old Blackburn add-on hooks from the '70s that you stack on the mounting bolt screwed into the dropout eyelet, but alas, my beater commuter bag has spring loaded s-hooks that will not reach down to the eyelet. They will barely get to the tube junction on the rack legs. Waaah. I noted, however, that there were vent holes in the back side of the tubes above the junction, so I tapped those both sides to 5mm (no drilling needed -- hole size was perfect for the tap) and put in a little SS M5 cap screw that acts as a hook. Works perfectly.
I'm going to zip tie the dyno wires to my fork and go for a ride with my pannier. The only reason I'm doing this is to justify my slowness. People will not expect me to be fast with my rack, pannier and dyno light. There is nothing in my pannier, but I may fill it with those blow-up bag packing things from the ebike unboxing just to give the impression I'm hauling a load.
Take pride in your slowness! It's OK as long as you keep moving.
--
- Frank Krygowski
By the way, I had an old Blackburn rack but the legs were too short for the rack platform to clear the fenders. I also have an abundance of panniers. I used to have a commuter with a rack, but I was content using a backpack the last decade or so, but now my back gets so sore with even the lightest load -- so what the heck, I'll try a rack again.
I tried riding with backpacks way, way back in the beginning. I really
disliked it, and thought even a crude Pletscher (sp?) rack was a big
improvement. Eventually I settled on Blackburn racks for most bikes.
It's raining today -- finally -- and I'm hoping the air cleans up enough for a healthy ride. Last night was lightning and thunder to rival Ohio. One of my earliest memories was watching lightning from the back porch of my great-aunts house in Tiffin. Last night was endless flashes and basically continuous thunder, which is really unusual for Ory-gun.
Your climate and mine seem pretty similar if you look at many broad
annual averages. But practice, they're quite different. Scary
thunderstorms are regular family entertainment here.
A huge cycling-related difference is your summer heat is generally dry,
while ours is soaked with humidity. Then there's this stuff called snow...
--
- Frank Krygowski