Steve B.

Finally, finally getting my touring setup going. In addition to purchasing F and R Ortleibs, I purchased Axiom F & R racks. The front would absolutely not fit my bike, returned it, ordered what turned out to be a very nice front rack from Roswheel.

The bike is a late 90's Koga Miyata City Liner, I've used it since "98, but never for supported touring, awaiting the funds to buy the gear, finally have done so. Even then, the Roswheel did not install as per their instructions as the locations of the mid-fork eyelet on the bike seemingly is not where Roswheel (or Axiom) thinks its supposed to be. Thus I changed the install, seems to work and mount OK, but I am puzzled as to have fork and eyelet placement and design changed in years ?. Pic's attached. The Roswheel recommended install uses provided triangular brackets to install to the dropout eyelets. A link to the Roswheel site shows their install method, 2nd photo shows how its installed on the bike, major difference in eyelet placement,

https://www.roswheel.com/products/tour-front-rack-1

Tourist in MSN

Looks like you did a good installation.

I think some of the older bikes had non-standardized distances between rack mounting points. And some modern ones leave a few things to be desired too.

djb

I used to think that racks would always just go on bikes, but with my limited experience, it seems to me that it's not uncommon to have to improvise things.
I've had some good mechanics show me ideas of workarounds, so I think it's somewhat common, especially with disc brakes.

djb

Steve, I once had a rack with similar long horizontal slots like this. I'd highly recommend using a washer between bolt and the slot, to spread the tightening force across a bigger area, allowing you to tighten it well and not mishape or damage the metal of the actual slot.(as seen in the area of the higher slot where you can see the bolt gouged the metal a bit)
With panniers and a rough road, you want a good solid attachment point.

Steve B.

I was surprised that the Axiom was completely not going to install, Well, it would, but only at a 30 deg. tilt to the rear, which to me was unacceptable as the panniers were not close to level. As well they provided very little in the way of extra hardware to facilitate install on odd systems. I was also very surprised at REI where I purchased the Ortleibs. They also stocked Axiom and REI house brand panniers but had pretty much few racks in stock. I called customer service to ascertain if I should wait a few weeks for inventory to return and was told they were not getting more and had stopped carrying Tubus. This possibly is a Tubus issue as another vendor that lists Tubus has zero inventory, so possibly a victim of the international supply chain problem. But I am surprised as REI has always been a go-to company for touring, and now seemingly are just not going to support this stuff. I wonder what folks do who purchase the panniers but cannot get racks to mount them on. Other vendor is the only answer.

Interested learning curve that there likely is no standard. Not surprised to find issues on a near 30 year old bike, that is otherwise a great frame for touring. It'll be fun once I get out there.

Steve B.

Yes, photo from last night. I swapped the black bolts today for stainless with washers.

djb

Good, just wanted to be sure.
And about your original question--ya, I don't know. When I'm home I'll look at the distance between the mounting points on my 30 yr old tourer vs newer bikes I have
All this said, I'm sure your work around should work, always good to put loctite on the threads, to help reduce chance of loosening bolts , it's very common.
Cheers

Steve B.

I have a suspicion that were I to contact Tubus or Axiom I would learn there probably is no standard placement for a mid-fork eyelet and that all the rack manufacturers can do is provide parts to adapt (Axiom did not). The Roswheel design has a lot of adjustment possibilities with parts they provide. I seemingly got lucky and am happy with how it installs and the quality of the rack.

They are a UK company, I had no clue they existed, saw the rack on the Universal Cycles site, found I could order direct, DHL had it to me in 3 days. Roswheel makes a lot of bags as well, good looking stuff. Not terribly priced and if I hadn't had a very large gift card at REI I might have purchased from them instead of Ortelib.

Andrew R Stewart 

There are a few variables going on when a rack designer tries to have their rack fit the bulk of the bell curve we call steering geometry/dropout shapes and "other".

Fork geometry- Steerer angle has a few degrees of common range
Rake- Are you a short or long person
Dropout shaping- eyelet placement, WRT the axle location, varies by a small amount
Tire diameter and Bag droop- Too low a mount WRT the tire's size can cause bottom of pannier scuffing the ground on tight turns. (U turns of crowned roads). How much road clearance is enough is a topic for the lawyers.

Ending up with a mounting that has the pannier somewhat vertical is an aesthetic goal but one that isn't as important in the ride as in it is in the photos. Still it's the look that many fall back to when judging this stuff. And that is but one reason why a custom builder wants to have the rack on hand during the building of the frame/fork. After installing dozens of front racks on production bikes has taught me to be somewhat critical of how the bike and rack mate up. When I had my own shop I would keep a couple/3 different low rider rack brands in stock (these days that's a laugh) just because some combos are better than others and I never knew what bike was next needing a rack.

IMO it's too bad that the Roswheel lacks a strut between the bottom of the loop that goes over the tire and the lowest point where a panniers hook goes. This missing segment suggests a lack of best bracing, but might reflect a patent work around? Either way that lower strut that the bottom of the pannier hooks to is more likely to flex/bend. Andy

djb

Ya, that does stand out as weird. As someone who used and still owns an old Blackburn original, one really wonder why on earth they would remove this bracing section-- as you say, it must be to avoid copying and legal aspects.

Sloppy design it seems

Tourist in MSN

I bought an Axiom front rack several years ago, I was sure that the bad photo that I saw the product listing had to be taken by a camera that was at an angle. It came, then found that it could not be installed horizontally. It was cheap, did not bother returning it and threw it into a box to take to a bike charity later.

But later I found that I could not fit a Tubus Tara on my Thorn Nomad and have the horizontal bar even close to horizontal. So, started looking at my other options, found that the Axiom would actually fit pretty well, but I think it did not fit the way intended. It lacked bracing, so I added another reinforcement to it. My Nomad has the upper mounts in front of the fork, the lower mounts behind the fork, and both mounts are up a bit higher than normal, thus this fork is one that is hard to fit some racks too. In the photo, it is not quite horizontal, but is close enough.




I have been pretty unhappy with REI for over a decade. Their buyers seem at times to be oblivious to what people want to buy or why. Quite often I found that to get the equipment I wanted for a camping trip meant that I had to go to some other camping stores to get, but REI is so big that some of the other small locally owned stores I used to go to went out of business during the past decade.

You used to be able to buy lots of small items there, a plastic measuring cup, 3 oz plastic squeeze bottles that you could put liquids in that would not be confiscated by TSA for a flight, but they seem to have decided that they do not want to sell the stuff that people need, they only want to sell the highest profit margin stuff. And sometimes the popular stuff that is high margin, suddenly they drop that too. Sorry, I am starting to rant.

Andrew R Stewart 

"only want to sell the highest profit margin stuff. And sometimes the popular stuff that is high margin, suddenly they drop that too. Sorry, I am starting to rant." Tourist in MSN
Tourist in MSN is offline Report Post

This is the way for most businesses. As margins have decreased (various reasons but internet sales are a big aspect) and product selection widened, stores find that they do better with a slim width of inventory. Add in the pressure from the big manufactures to capture retailer investment in their brand and you have shops reduce their number of suppliers and thus what they offer to the consumer. For most shops a missed sale is less costly than a left over inventory item is.

I've lived this for over 45 years and watched the changes, shifting $ from the local enthusiast owned LBS (who used a pen and paper to do weekly orders with) to reginal/national chains (and their inventory management apps built into the point of sale system). Most every "well run" shop these days have some sort of death list. The top 100 items they can't be without. For many shops beyond that list the motivation to stock the less common stuff is greatly reduced. Andy

djb

Thanks Andy, always appreciated your experienced insight into the bike shop world and the changes over these last x years.
All makes sense

Tourist in MSN

REI was started as a coop to aid climbers to obtain the hard to find stuff that they could not find in stores, I am paraphrasing their initial purpose here, not copying and pasting it. I do not know if their initial purpose is still written down anywhere. And to this day, it is a coop, not intended to be a profit making endeavor.

The climbers that were the initial members also were campers, so they added camping gear. And that slowly expanded into other muscle powered sports such as cross country skiing and snowshoeing. I still remember they did a poll of the membership several decades ago to decide if the members wanted them to expand into downhill skiing, since that required non-muscle powered lifts as part of the outdoor activity, thus it was not part of their initial purpose.

For decades they have returned dividends of 10 percent during almost all years. When I joined REI, it was based on all purchases. And I recall one year they paid a much smaller dividend because that year they had a difficult year and they had a lot of unsold inventory. And decades ago they reduced the dividend to only items that were not bought on sale, etc.

One of my first jobs was while I was in high school working in a grocery store. One day the store manager explained some of their pricing stragegy, he said that they lost money on things like flour and sugar, as these were things that they had to sell because customers expect to find these things in a grocery store. But if they tried to make much of a profit on those things, customers would shop elsewhere, those were the things that every store competed on price. I think this is a lesson that REI should learn. If you stop selling some of the things that people want, they are less likely to come in the door. A couple decades ago, if I needed something I did not research it, I just went to REI because they had it, but now when I go to REI, I often walk out empty handed. This past Tuesday, once again I walked out empty handed. I joined REI in the mid 1970s, buying stuff by catalog sales and mail order, at that time they were small and all their retail stores were on the west coast. I was happy when they opened a store a couple miles from my home, was there often, but now I rarely go into their store any more.

Yes, internet sales have cut into their sales and revenue. If REI was created as a for-profit company, their goal would be to make a profit for the owners, thus I would not be making this complaint. But they were not. I would have been a lot happier if REI would have trimmed their dividend or slowed their growth if it meant that they kept up their initial goal of - obtaining the hard to find stuff to sell to their members.

staehpj1

It looked like Rosswheel was selling knock off type stuff for dirt cheap not all that long ago. It seemed too cheap to be any good, but when I ordered a seat pack it was actually real nice IMO. Looking at their current offerings it looks like they are trying to reinvent themselves as a regular brand name product. The prices are not high, but not super low like they were. They may still be a good value if the quality is as good or better than it was. I see that now they are being sold thru bigger sellers (REI and high volume online bike stores). I kind of wish I had bought more of their stuff when it was dirt cheap. I could have used a few more items.

IPassGas

All of the above comments are on point. I could perhaps add that for everything that requires bolt connection on my bikes (cages, racks, etc), I use split ring washers. Loctite is of course good, but only if you don't often remove stuff from the bike. When on tour I expect everything to work without issue. Since this has been a rack thread, Tubus always has my respect.

Steve B.

Tubus is tough to get right now. REI seemingly has stopped carrying that brand, which is baffling. My local shop says they cannot get yet. Universal Cycles shows not available and the Tubus website says no inventory. I think maybe made in China with pandemic delays.

veganbikes

Tubus Duos and Tara SS are in stock at JBI A lot of shop have accounts with them and they have warehouses all over the country. Yes they are out of a lot of stuff but that is the case for a lot of stuff these days so not really anything that new.