Rear Rack on the Cheap
 

I decided to throw a rear rack on my Kona Wo but I'm cheap. They want a whole lot of $$ for them. So I looked at what I had laying on the shelf and there was a Pletscher rat-trap rack I'd pulled off an old bike about 10 years ago. But I'd have to make it about 4 inches wider. I did something similar earlier in the summer with a Pletscher knock off onto a gravel bike so this ought to be easy. And it was. And cheap. I had some aluminum flat bar stock from Menard's laying around and a piece of 10-24 threaded rod. I had to buy a 12 in section of aluminum tubing, 4 stainless washers, and two stainless nyloc nuts. I drilled out the rivets holding the vertical supports so I could run the threaded rod through and space out the supports. I used about an inch more rod than I needed. Using a tubing cutter (hacksaw would be fine) I cut three pieces of tubing. Two of them were to space the ends of the rack out to the total width of the bosses on the frame. The third was the bit in the middle. Once I had this all loosely attached to the bike I used a level to get the rack in the right position and measured the distance to the front mounting points. I cut the flat bar stock to length and used a vise and a dead-blow hammer to carefully bend it into the three sides of a rectangle I would need. Make the arms a little longer than you need and file it back after test fitting it! I drilled holes to mount the piece to both the frame and the rack. Finally I put the aluminum in a vise between 2 pieces of wood the width of the rack mount (2 inches in this case) and bent each arm to get the correct angle for mounting the rack so it would be flush when I screwed it down. This makes more sense when you look at the pictures. I installed it and after it was all tight I cut the excess threaded rod off with a hacksaw.i I wouldn't sit on it but t's pretty stable and will hold anything I want to put back there. The final step was to put on some corrugated plastic to act as a rear fender. I used a hole punch to poke holes in it and zip-ties to attach it. I'll need to cut a couple of notches in it to mount a bag and I think I will extent the fender a few inches. All-in-all I spent less than $10 on this and it only took me a couple of hours. If you had to buy the threaded rod and the flat bar stock it would only be another $6.00. And all the corrugated plastic you could dream of will be available in, oh, about 10 days ;-).



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Nice job

Necessity is the mother ****** of invention :)

I bought a small welder and am going to teach myself to weld this winter so I can begin fabricating racks and accessories for bikes. I get tired of the high prices and lack of supply for anything not in the mainstream market.

Update: I put an extension on the original but I wasn't happy with how long it was for mud coverage so I dropped a note on the local FB neighborhood group to see if I could scavenge up a now-useless campaign sign in the 3-foot range. No one offered up anything but a local guy did have access to coroplast at work and cut me a couple of 3-foot by 6-inch pieces. I used a heat gun to get a nice bend in it. While the old one was off I removed the clamp and springs from the rack as I'll never use them with the fender on there. Now it repels all the snow and mud the rear wheel can throw and uses less than half the zip-ties of the first version.

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Nice work. I had the same issue. Wanted a fat front rack but the local shop had none. But they did have a fat rear rack that was on sale for a sweet price. Bought it and took it home. With a few simple modifications it fits perfectly on the front of my Pug. Found a thick black sheet of plastic and carved it with a scissors to perfection and added it to the rack to act as a mudguard. Now I can haul all my goods in the front. It's much easier to push a load than it is too pull a load. And the rear end of a Pug is plenty heavy enough as it is. No need to add more to it!