@MTB Rob @ c_klein87
Here are a few photos of my Tripster with my new home-made front pannier rack.
The fork is from a Rose Pro DX cyclocross bike. I did a lot of research to look for a carbon fork with disc brake mounts and pannier mounts. This is the ONLY fork available with that specification. I contacted Rose to ask if I could buy the fork, but they refused to sell it separately from the bike…. In the end I was very lucky to find one for sale on Ebay! The fork comes with the added bonus of having a 15mm thru axle for added stiffness (and slightly more difficult to pinch the wheel using a allen key thru axle). It also has internal cable routing for both the hydraulic brake cables and dynamo cables. The fork is also compatible with Shimano’s new flat-mount road specific disc brakes.
I made the pannier using a 2m length of 10mm outer diameter titanium tubing. I used a pipe bender to bend without causing the pipe to kink. I drilled holes for bolting to the fork. I bought some black plastic end-caps from Ebay to finish it off.
The front rack doubles-up as a stay for my mudguards, as well as a mounting point for my front dynamo light (Busch and Muller IQ-X). I decided to route the cables for the front and rear dynamo lights internally to the pannier racks… It makes it look much tidier but is very fiddly! The cabling for the Plug III (USB charger) is also routed internally to the fork.
The bike is now ready for my camping tour through France/Spain later this year! 🙂