Paul Barnard

I may do a few quick overnight offroad trips while I am in CO this summer. My MTB has rack mounts, but the configuration has left me scratching my head. The high lower eyelets on the stay coupled with the low upper eyelets combined with the really high 29er tire have me wondering if a conventional rack will work. Take a look and tell me what you think.

curbtender

Bikepacking Routes, Gear, Inspiration - BIKEPACKING.com

Marcus_Ti

As someone else cursed with those borderline useless mid stay bosses, you're going to have to get creative and fab something ..or have actual useful bosses tacked on nearer the axle.

Other option being bike packing.


Don't get me wrong...love my Lynskey OEMd frame otherwise, but that mid stay bosses design was a pile of stupid on their design department.

CliffordK

Interesting design.

It appears as if the company chose to do higher than normal rear stay mounts to get around issues with the above stay disc caliper design.

But, it may also help with mounting say a 26" rack.

The forward rack mounts can normally be bent or directed towards the mount. But, overall, I also question how stable the whole thing would be. Heavy load? Light load?

How often do you raise and lower your seatpost?

I think these can be connected directly to the seatpost. I can't tell if they're designed to be a collar, or clamp directly to the post, or either one.

https://problemsolversbike.com/produ...seatpost_clamp



I wonder if there would be any benefits of doing dual forward mounts for the rack. One to the seatstays, and one to the post. Racks with those thin steel strips should be able to take an extra pair.

Paul Barnard

Since I am not going to be hauling much, and that load wouldn't be heavy, would something like this work? I just need it to get me few a couple overnighters and then I can toss it.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/For-BMX-Rea...r/273730993021

djb

with panniers, even small ones, that rack has very limited side strut thingees, Id be concerned about the panniers going into the rear wheel.

there must be a small short rack out there.

or heck, you buy a reasonable rack, and do some surgery on it to shorten it a fair amount--as long as you could find someone to weld it properly--especially if you plan to go light anyway.

or as mentioned, you look into backpacking bags, but often they are fairly pricey...

daoswald

Those lower bosses are high enough on the seat stays that they will position panniers forward, within the heel-kick zone. I can't imagine how you could use a rack mounted on those to carry panniers.

I wonder if the manufacturer created (at one time) a rack specifically for that bike. Such non-standard bosses cannot be expected to be useful to someone with a generic rack. There's got to be either a bracket (that was once) available, or a rack.

Chasing that down is going to be hard. Maybe the under-saddle bikepacking bag would be your most immediately available option.

Paul Barnard

I thought about this one. You know, if it was a collar that could slide up and down the length of the seatpost, that could be the solution. I need that forward attachment point to be higher.

djb

these seat collars are machined to nestle down onto the seat tube, with an inner lip so it stops on top of seat tube.

btw those are very pretty and blingy dropout designs aren't they? The 3 leaf clover.

one other straightforward possible is to just go with some good study p clamps for the lower attachment point--if the load is light this would work. This would allow the use of any regular rack.
remember that Thule rack, made for bikes with no eyelets, that uses adjustable clamps? It had a solid reputation, but pricey if I recall, and I'm not sure if still sold.

Tourist in MSN

Looks like you have the quick release version hub, not the through axle. Thus, a rack where you use the skewer instead of mounting the rack on the frame might be the only practical option to get the rack back and down at a level that it was designed for. But I do not know if such racks would clear the disc brake.

And if you had such a rack, you could use that rack on your Backroad too. But you might need extra long stays on the mountain bike compared to the Backroad.

Those seatpost clamps that will function as rack mounts, they often have a small lip that is designed to hold the clamp from sliding down your seat tube, as they were designed to go on a seattube and function as the seapost clamp. If you look close at the photo you linked to above, you can see that lip. I have used a Dremel Moto Tool to grind down that lip so that I could put the clamp on my seatpost instead of on the seat tube. Of you lack a tool to grind it down, you could probably use a shim instead to be able to use that up on the seatpost.

The old man mountain racks were designed to use the cantilever brake posts as part of the mount, but you certainly could mount it some other way and use one of their skewer mounted racks. Take a look at their racks.

djb

I wonder if an OMM would be tall enough, those 29inch tires are pretty darn tall, and any skewer rack is automatically locked into the "skewer to safe distance above the wheel" factor

P clamp or Thule rack at least has the flexibility of allowing the clamps to go on the stays where needed, although limited a bit by those unique mid area eyelets, but it seems to me that p clamps would work well-- again, purely because of light panniers, filed with clothes lets say.

an inexpensive frame pack could do tools that are heavy, and maybe add a reasonably priced handlebar bag or dry bag strapped on to handlebars or something for other stuff to have close at hand.

Paul, what panniers were you thinking of using?
A cheap rear rack with p clamps and arkel dry-lite panniers will give 25 litres of waterproof very light panniers, plus room on top of rack for other light stuff.

u235

Axiom Streamliner line is several racks that come with brackets that can utilize the QR for attachment. Very adaptable to many configurations. I don't use the QR but still use them for heal and brake clearance on the normal amount point.

Paul Barnard

I thought about using a Dremel to grind the lip down. I may try the el cheapo adjustable ebay rack. They have one for $15. If it works great, if not I can use it as a seatpost rack. Or just toss it. If I were going to tour on this bike regularly, I wouldn't mind spending good money on rigging it out right. I will definitely not be leaving the rack on this one as I do my Backroad.

Paul Barnard

I haven't decided yet. I had some old Nashbar panniers that I bought on closeout about 10 years ago. I left them in the attic and the heat destroyed the glued seams.

I'd like to find some smaller ones that will have enough space for sleeping bag on one side and my compressed pillow and inflatable mat on the other. I'd like a little extra room to stuff a few extra garments. Colorado gets COLD at night at 10K plus elevation. My tent will go on the top rack. Some water in my Camelbak and water bottle. Then some ready to eat food in my Camelbak storage. It won't take a lot of storage at all. My sleeping bag is about 12x7 as packed. The pillow and mat are fairly compact as well.

Paul Barnard

Hmmm. Has potential. What about the forward attachment point? Will the hardware reach down to my factory eyelets?

https://www.axiomgear.com/products/r...iner-29er-dlx/

djb

interesting, didnt know they had a 29 version. I've put one for 700 on my wifes road bike, good rack, solid. The qr is a bit of a pain in the rear to fiddle with , but no biggie.

the deal will be the length of the hardware. On my Troll that has low down factory eyelets under the seat area like your bike (the troll is essentially a mtb shape) the hardware on my rack is I believe 340mm long, and that works, so maybe find out the length of them on this axiom, a bit of forward slant isnt the end of the world, but it would depend on how much slant...

looks like you will be experimenting, and deciding how much money you want to throw at this project, while at the same time figuring how much weight will actually be on the rear rack...

have fun

Paul Barnard

I may have figured out a way to use the Streamliner. I can use this shim https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sunlite-All...IAAOSwUKxYls5y with this collar in 31.8 https://www.axiomgear.com/products/r...k-seat-collar/ I can grind the stop out of the collar. The .2 mm difference shouldn't be an issue. There looks to be plenty of room to compress the collar.

Am I visualizing this correctly?

djb

Im confused, your bike has two eyelets below the seat, and they are at least an inch closer to a rack, so even better for rack bar tube thingees length concerns.

just a heads up on the Streamliner re top rack width. As I can attest with the one I put on my wifes bike, the top section is very narrow. Not ideal for strapping a tent on, but perhaps this 29er version is wider, it looks wider than the one Ive put on. Anyway, even if Im wrong, just be aware of how narrow it is, this is what makes it "streamlined" and always has been the design and appeal to roadies putting on a rack and small panniers, where average speeds are going to be higher than joe blow fully loaded up tourer.

Tourist in MSN

I think for that small an amount of stuff, you might need bike packing saddle harness for a drybag. If you think you would have too much stuff for that and need to support such a bag, I attached a photo of a bike I saw several years ago where someone did a DIY saddle harness support. And maybe use a harness for the tent under the handlebar?

I have never used bikepacking gear, so I am really ignorant of the specifics, but I am guessing this would work fine.

u235

Not the chrome one without bending (they claim 30 degree with no strength loss) but the black ones can by adjusted to just about anything, they can go in any direction via a pivot if they are long enough.

Paul Barnard

I can't see how it would pivot. Can you explain it to me or do you have a photo that demonstrates it?

https://www.axiomgear.com/img/prod/s...29er-dlx-2.jpg

Paul Barnard

My thought was to use the pictured parts to establish an anchor point further up the seatpost. Leave the original seatpost collar where it is and with the new parts I could slide it up and down the post to the ideal point then tighten up the collar nut. I'd end up sawing off an appropriately sized piece of the shim.

u235

The front rods are on a pivot, that red rod holder can move 360 degrees and tightened down resulting in the rod can go almost anywhere you want minus any interference, you can also cut the rods down if needed. The two holders also can put put closer or further apart to work with a variety of frame widths. Example with one rod pointing almost straight down.

fishboat

I think this will work fine. I have 4 of the streamline racks on four bikes..very nice. Also have one attached by the ground-out seat post collar..works great.

The rack can be had from Bikesmiths cycle shop in Milwaukee..local shop for me..good supplier.used them many times, and their prices are often the best you'll find. They have an ebay store or their direct-website.

djb

thanks for the photos, this saved me explaining it by taking some photos of my racks that do this.

Paul, this is why you dont need to go the seat post clamp route, a rack like this can angle the stay things down to your frames existing eyelets, and will work fine.

Even traditional methods of racks that use two "metal bands" that are screwed into the rack flat surface are easily bent to shape to bend down to existing eyelets if need be, I've done this on countless bikes and they hold up perfectly well. In fact, just yesterday I was bending a couple of things like I am describing, to put on an old bike I am fixing up, and used my vice and a large adjustable wrench to do all the bending of these common steel parts, dont know what they are called exactly.
Traditionally they even need to be twisted also, so the end with the single hole that gets lined up with the eyelets on your frame below the seat is at the right orientation. Twisting and bending them to the right position is fine.