Originally Posted by
Ironfish653
Guess I’ll have to give up on fitting that old Blackburn on to the front of my townie, since no one makes a hardware kit specifically for a 1976 Bridgestone.
Seriously, though, this is not a Mars lander or a Deepwater drilling rig; it’s a bicycle. This isn’t that hard.
I know we all want everything perfect, but sometimes the solution isn’t packaged, labeled and hanging on a peg behind the sales counter.
If I was setting this up as an on-road touring bike, and just using the front bags for a sleeping bag and a puffy jacket, I could probably get away with some hack that puts a bit of downward bending force on the lower mounting bolts, even though the manufacturer now advises against using a front rack with this fork.
But setting this up as a grocery bike, on which I'm likely to push the rated weight limit of the front bags and front rack, that's not a good idea. I really do need to minimise or eliminate the leverage forces on bolts used to mount load-bearing racks.
With this in mind, I'm starting to think "the solution" may be braze-on eyelets installed on the fork. I think that meets your criteria of not being packaged, labeled and hanging on a peg behind the sales counter. What I need to do now is find a frame-builder who can assess the feasibility of this, and hope that the manufacturer is willing to make a good-faith effort to cover that cost, after advertising the bike as being compatible with a front-rack, and advertising their front-rack as being compatible with this bike.