Arguably neither classic nor vintage this beauty came on a '76 Nishiki International I picked up quite a while ago. I thought it was hilarious so on the shelf it went. Due to the pandemic the August 1st Tour de Tonka, a very well-supported bike ride around the communities on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, was canceled. In its place will be a "virtual" tour in which we'll ride a similar distance as what we signed up for (like 70 miles) but with no rest stops. We're up for it but we'll need to carry more stuff with us. So I dragged the bad-boy up and looked at mounting it to my regular ride. First off, it was too narrow. The axle width on my bike is much wider than the Murray single speed this was probably meant to go on. I ground off the rivets and added some spacers so the supports would be in the same plane as the fender mounts. Even so, the supports were a little on the short side so it was canted back pretty bad. I picked up a 3-foot section of 1/4 inch aluminum tubing, cut it to length, pinched the ends flat and drilled them. Now the rack sits level and I can mount a bag to it. The tubes are a little lighter weight than the originals, which I believe are solid so hopefully they were a little over-engineered. Frankly, the whole thing is lighter than most of the modern ones I've seen. If it works out I might need to keep it installed.
