I’m turning my old Inbred into a hack/shopper bike and want to fit a rack. However, since I last had a rack on it it’s progressed to disc brakes which interfer with the rack’s legs and rather than spend £30 of a disc specific rack I’ve tried to heath robinson it. They’re BB7s too so have an actuation arm which pushes things out further. The rack legs are supposed to sit flush to the dropouts and bolt in but to fit the rack I’ve had to bend the legs out over the caliper quite some way. This pulls the driveside of the rack into the tyre so obviously it’s had to be stretched out on that side too to centre (roughly) the rack over the tyre – in fact it’s not fully centred, I decided not to do this to avoid stretching things further.

Everything it set and feels nice and solid, but there’s an awful lot of tension in the rack legs (I reckon they’ve been splayed out 3 or 4 inches more than they should be) and I can just imagine them snapping and ending up in the spokes! I know that I’m not the first to fit a standard rack over a disc caliper and it has saved me a bit of dosh, but equally I’d like to avoid accidents.

It’s not pretty (a mixture of nuts, bolt, washers and bits from old V-brakes) but it does seem to work for now. What do people think?

well, if it’s good enough solution for the Kona Sutra….. 🙂

rode too and from SSWC in aviemore with that set up exactly !

who knows as we cant actually tell how much tension is in the legs, but if it is an accident waiting to happen be sure to post pics of the aforementioned accident.

Could you put some P clips on your lower seat stays and fit the rack on those instead?

Or have a ocuple of holes tapped into the lower seat stays and bolt the rack onto those?

I used to bodge more than i do now,but peace of mind and reliability are worth paying for i’ve now decided.

This is from Argos Cycles…

To supply & fit new:

Bottle bosses including stainless bolts (braze-on or rivet-in type) £15.00

I guess holes in the lower steat stays would probably cost about the same?

Pay for peace of mind and reliability. 🙂

Pjay, I see that you’ve packed out both sides of the rack. I did this on my Inbred and the rack leg put pressure on the brake calliper causing mild disc rub. So I then removed the packing from the drive side braze-on. This created a few millimetres of clearance between the rack and the caliper. This meant that the rack looked a fraction lopsided but I overcame my natural disposition towards OCD and issues of symmetry and learnt to live with it 😉 It made no perceivable difference to the handling when the bike was fully laden. Also, the rack was more sturdey and wobbled less when only packed out on one side. The following photo dosen’t show both sides of the rack fixing but I thought I’d post it anyway for purposes of illustration. Hope this helps. Keep on truckin’ 🙂
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baldSpot – Member

well, if it’s good enough solution for the Kona Sutra…..

I don’t understand this comment.

Thanks for the tips Slugwash, the driveside is slightly less packed out, I found the leg dragging on the caliper arm too but needed some packing on the driveside to keep that leg off the tyre. It all feels pretty stable and secure but it is a bodge.

Timothy, by P-clips a assume you mean something like these (found on ebay)

Do you think that they’d be more secure that the dropout mounts?

I have similar set ups on a couple of bikes.

I stretched the legs apart further than they needed to be so that when they sprung back there was no stress on them when bolted on, I also tapped out the mounting points to M6 rather than M5

My wife has this set up on her Dawes when we go touring, we did have a rear rack break at the weld, when touring around Ireland. It didn’t go into the spokes but we rode on it for 2 days before we were able to Zip tie it in place and its still going strong. The rack was lightweight Aluminium Karrimor one, I’d go for a steel Tubus rack now as that could be fixed out in the wilds.

Druidh, I think that the Kona Sutra has a rack and BB7 Roads although I’d guess that they use a proper disc rack rather than a bodge like this! 😳

PJay.

That’s what i ment by P clips,but i don’t know if they’re good for very heavy loads,it could depend on how much you’re carrying.

I’m no expert,but i thought something might be less likely to go ping with a not very heavy load and P clips. It could depend on how much you’re carryig though.

In Cycling Plus the Kona Sutra does have a similar bodge to that on the left hand side,and the testers didn’t really like it. It had a very long bolt and they thought with heavy loads it could put a lot of weight on the end of the bolt,and possibly cause it to fail.

If it was me i’d get a hole put in at the bottom of each seatstay and use those to mount my rack,but i probably worry about some things more than i need to occasionally.

Cheers
Tim

Dunno where this stuff about the Sutra is coming from…

The new(ish) Sutra comes with a rack which is mounted onto specific seatstay braze-ons, about 3-4″ above the dropouts and therefore well clear of the disk.

The older Sutra (like mine) also has these braze-ons. However, I managed to fit a standard rack (i.e. non disk) through the simple expedient of sliding the wheel back a bit (slidey drop-outs) and using four small washers between the rack and the dropout. This keeps it well clear of the brake actuator.

[Edit – just been over to Bike Radar and seen the review in question. Looks like they’ve “upgraded” it…. 😕 ]

There are kits out there similar that come with the rack as Baldspot said.

Thing is the rack is designed for it and have stretched it out-if it was steel it’d be ok but aluminaum rack might break.

Be careful.