cudak888 

For the longest time, I've considered putting a rear rack on my '51 Raleigh. Preferably something that doesn't look too anachronistic.



Presstubes are not a consideration - I don't like the way they look, and the sandwich clamp is a no-no. I also wouldn't mind a fair bit of functionality too.

Coincidentally, I recently bought a rear rack from Chinazon for my eventual commuter - a customized Spin Gen 2 (one of the ones donated to the Bike Share Museum) - and the rack turned out to be a lot nicer than one would assume for a no-name import. It's also fairly classic in it's overall styling, and I'm particularly keen on the flip-up sides that convert it from pannier mounting into what's basically a rear porteur rack.







However, the rack is made for braze-on mounting only, and the '51 doesn't have any (obviously). I know P-clips exist, but I'm not willing to use them - I can't stand the look, nor do I want to scratch up the stays (or have slippage or worry about long-term rubber dry-rot).

Eventually, I found this little stainless steel widget under Trek's Bontrager label. It's the "Bontrager BackRak Lightweight Brake Caliper Plate" - apparently an adapter for one of their racks:


It'd be ideal...if it were actually available here in the States. I can probably get one eventually, but I'm curious if I've missed any similar offerings out there that might work and have the simple elegance not to stand out like a wart.

Google hasn't been of much help, and I figured I'd call upon the forum's wisdom. Any ideas?

-Kurt

unterhausen

p clips with rubber coating on top of a couple of wraps of electrical tape will not leave any trace. You can get that seat post rack attachment here. Problem solvers sells one, not sure about others

cudak888 

Is it on their site?

It's not the one integrated with the collar, is it?

-Kurt

unterhausen

I think it does have a collar, although I think you want it to clamp to the seatpost

That bontrager part looks for all the world like a headlight crown mount. You might want to look at those

Okay, there is a Salsa and a Sunlite seat collar/rack mount available https://www.google.com/search?q=bicy...X1ApjSwCp0m9M:

I took my p clamps off of my touring bike after being on there for 30-some years and there is no evidence they were there. You barely need anything to hold a rack to the stays, they are connected there to keep the rack from rocking. All the load is held at the dropouts. That's why the French guys got away with mounting them to the brake bosses.

scarlson 

I would not touch that Bontrager adapter thing with a ten foot pole. I've seen things like it, and they are really flimsy. The seat collar is integrated into that Problem Solvers thing, I believe, so it's for an outside diameter of a frame tube, not for the seatpost itself.

Tubus makes really good seat stay clamps, which employ no rubber at all. I've heard they are very solid, but I lack personal experience with them. You might consider those but I'd guess they would scratch the frame, albeit probably less than anything else that's bare metal, because they're well-made and designed not to slip.

As for attaching to the brake bolt, I would fabricate something. All you really need is an adjustable wrench, a file, a drill, and some 1/8 x 3/4 aluminum bar. Bend, file, and drill it until it looks how you want it. I would recommend making something like this, wide enough to clear the side pull arms.



Or just buy this sort of bracket, this listing has dimensions so you could see if it would clear your sidepull.

The way I found that was by searching "adapter" in the "carrier&pannier racks" category of Ebay.

AeroGut

Brackets like this come with Sunlite racks and some other brands, so an LBS might have extras lying around from doing installs on bikes with mounts. I'm pretty sure I have an extra one, but you can probably find one for cheaper than it would cost me to ship it to you.

Bianchigirll 

Presstubes? I am guessing a 'sandwich' clamp is something like a Pletscher rack uses?

Unless you're willing to use P clips or get the frame modified I think your out of luck.

That Bontranger thing looks interesting but I don'e see a lot of lateral stability in it. Do you know tinkerers, smittys or others trained in the arts of metallurgy? You could try making something like that Bontrager bracket but that has two supports on either side to keep it from rocking side to side.

scarlson 

Prestube racks are a Nottingham Raleigh brand thing. Basically made of pressed steel in the shape of a hollow tube rack. Some like 'em, some hate 'em, I think they're fairly durable if nothing else. And yeah, I think a sandwich clamp here refers to what some of the Pletscher racks use. Kinda junky.

That's been my experience too. I have a friend who's got one just like it, even though his bike has braze-ons. He said it came with the rack he bought and had installed by bike shop goons. Such rubbish. It wobbled all over the place, especially with loaded panniers over bumps. We did an 80-miler on the cape and it was so mesmerizing/irritating to watch his rack sway in time half-a-beat behind the rest of the bike that I had to ride in front. I have been bugging him to let me machine him something to rectify the situation, but he's an elusive dude. I will melt that darn bracket down when I get it!

dweenk

P-clips can solve many clamping problems. But aesthetically they may not float your boat.

cudak888 

First off, thank you to everyone for the input. I had a feeling that the Bontrager stainless mount was pushing the envelope of what a sliver of steel could do. Guess I was right to question it.

I'm also familiar with that little steel bracket adapter. Mounting it is basically the same thing as the Bontrager mount, only less elegant: If you don't have a Pletscher-style bridge, you have to mount it with a Y shaped bracket to the brake bridge, or - most commonly - go the sandwich route. Yech.

I know quite a few of you continue to suggest P-clips, but I still think they look like crap. However, I wouldn't be averse to the idea of using a pair of Schmidt/SON light mounts if they can tighten around the stays correctly, but the mounting points would be 90 degrees to what I need.



If he won't give you the pleasure of machining something, can I? I do have an idea of something that would mount to the brake bridge, but the design would cradle the bridge for stability. The biggest limitation is the length of the Raleigh brake caliper centerbolt.

-Kurt

Bianchigirll 

The Cape? You mean Cape Cod out to P-Town? Haven't ridden up there is years, I used to ride with a fun bunch out the Hingham area and once a twice a year we'd ride out to P-Town.

Bianchigirll 

Judging from a few pics I've seen so far I can't belive the clamp wouldn't rotate 90 degrees. There seems to be a lot of other flexibility built into this.

However for what appears to be $40 each for those I'd tolerate a few 99 cent P Clamps

79pmooney

Bianchigirll, my mom, my best friend's dad and uncle used to lead us kids from Boston to Nauset Beach and Eastham more than 50 years ago. (I got my start early.)

scarlson 

Yeah, that ride! It's a good one.
I particularly like the gravel stretches of Old Kings Hwy from Wellfleet past Truro to Highland Light. What a beautiful area! There are a few kettle ponds that never have tourists in them, even in high season, because of the deep sand of the roads and the fact that some aren't on Google maps any longer. I've done it on randonneur bikes and road bikes, and you do have to carry your bike for a short few sections, but it's not a dealbreaker, just a barrier to entry.

Right, I was thinking the caliper bolt was probably going to be a limiting factor. And I'm guessing it's a special Raleigh thread so we can't easily use a recessed nut to make it longer and put the bracket on the front of the seatstays. How much extra bolt length is there to play with?

Also, making something to cradle the brake bridge might be difficult. I can drill a hole through a block of aluminum and then cut it in half, but it probably won't fit exactly and if it does fit even closely it will be liable to scratch the paint same as anything clamp-on if it moves at all.

What if you put the brake in front of the stays? Then the brake arms aren't in the way of rack struts going close to the caliper mounting hole. Then you (or I, if you prefer) could make something of folded stainless steel or machined aluminum, to go under the caliper mounting nut, with little ears to take the bolts from the rack struts. I think this would be pretty stable, and although the rack struts would be close together I think that's the least of your worries.

Or if the brake bolt can be moved within the brake arms (I think it can if those are the Raleigh brakes I'm familiar with), something made of thick-enough folded stainless steel could also be put under the head of it instead of a washer, and the brake reassembled. Then the rack struts would mount to little ears on that thing. That would be pretty elegant, wouldn't require doing a weird front-side brake mount, and would be just as stable as the idea above.

I thought about brazing something to the head of the brake bolt or making a special nut, but I don't think it would work because the brake bolt or nut are going to have to be tightened to wherever allows the brake arms to move freely and then the thing I've brazed on might end up at a weird angle, when it needs to be horizontal. This limits our options.

rccardr 

Kurt- Don't have an easy mounting answer for you, but also picked up one of those racks, and it really is nicely made and finished.
Will fit both the Cannondale ST and Davidson Discovery, which have rack mounts.

cudak888 

Just saw this pop back up - had forgotten all about this.

I haven't checked to see if it's British Standard 26tpi, but chances are it is. The nut (which is not a locknut) leaves about 1mm sticking out from the back, but the nut is about 6mm deep. It could probably engage with 4mm of threads with the addition of some threadlocker.

True, but better a few nicks to the back of the bridge than the stays - plus, a bit of foam in the gap could prevent damage.

I'd rather not change the overall nature of the '51 as it came from the factory by reversing the brake, but the stainless bracket under the head of the bolt is an interesting idea - but I'm not sure if it's possible on the earlier brakes.There's a sleeve inside that the bolt closes down on, which provides the overall pressure adjustment on the arms.

Unfortunately, impossible. The bolt threads into the spacer that sandwiches the arms. The spacer itself is curved to conform to the brake bridge.

That said, I completely forgot that the seat lug ears on this bike are exceptionally square and almost the same width of the seat lug. A pair of rails long enough to run from the lug down to the rack ought to do the trick, don't you think? Granted, it'd be nice to braze a reinforcement between the rails for such a long run.

It is, isn't it? The only weak point I found is the weld at the back for the loop of tubing in the main rail. They could have filled the gap a bit better. That's the only thing I can fault it for.

-Kurt

73StellaSX76

Maybe someone already suggested this but look closely at the top front mounting on that orange Spin bike pictured above and you’ll see a rack mount integrated with the seat post clamp. Problem Solvers and others sell these. Maybe you can create a shim for one and mount it on the seat post above the frame. It has two “ears” which you can mount the rack arms to.

cudak888 

I know - I'm the one who installed the adapter. All things considered, it seems as if this could be simplified a step further by going straight to the seatlug ears. I know this is usually the cheap way of doing it, but I examined them a bit closer (keep in mind that the last time I secured the seatpost bolt was 12 years ago or so) closely and realized they're quite wide and extremely square; not the usual smushed ears of most boom-era frames.

P.S.: The Spin Gen 2 comes by default with a quick release (and a keyed seatpost - see https://bikesharemuseum.com/bikes/2017-spin-gen-2/):

the sci guy 

I too am very concerned about aesthetics and I encountered a similar problem with my rebuild of ‘74 Raleigh. I got the Pletscher Clem rack from Riv Bike, but there are no mounts on the seat stays, and I had no interest in mounting it behind the brake as it looks awful.
I begrudgingly got some P clamps from the plumbing section at my local ACE Hardware and while the mounting was still a little wonky as I had to flip the rack arms upside down to make everything fit in such a tight area. Seems absurd when I think about it since fitting a rack would seem obvious on a model called the Super Tourer.
BUT in the end I am happy with how it looks, even by my super picky aesthetic standards.

I’m posting this from my iPhone so hopefully these 2 pics will work. One is what the full bike looks like, the other is a closer up view of the rack attachment so you can see how it’s not too bad! Hope it helps your decision a little.