I thought I had solved the problem by cutting a hole in my tray to allow the fender to drop through, and while somewhat awkward, this did work until I built my last bike with a front fender that comes inches from the ground.

While the fender still made it without hitting the roof of my car, I had lowered the fender struts so much, that they now hit the side of the tray. Fed up and not wishing to drill new holes in my nice fenders I decided to look for a two piece fork mount rack.

There are some solutions that raise the front fork and might work with fenders that were short to even somewhat on the long side, such as  the Atoc Draftmaster Bike Topper or the Hurricane Components Fork Up Riser, but these might not work with my bike, as the front fender comes within inches of the ground.

There two other racks that seem like the perfect solution, though. The Yakima Boa or the Rhino SQRS/RBC-012.

Both of these seem like they might work great, except that I unfortunately have Thule Aero bars, which seem to be incompatible with just about every other manufacturer’s products in addition to many Thule products. While they look nice, the attachment system is inane. Please don’t buy these, just get the ugly black square bars.

I like the self-centering fork mount of my Thule Echelon rack so I decided to remove the tray entirely and use a slightly modified Thule Wheel On carrier as the rear restraint.

By removing the aluminum arms I could use the tilting base in much the same manner as the Yakima Boa. The removed arms even left room for one or two retention straps:

I mounted the fork mount, without the tray and was slightly concerned about the weight of the fork wanting to rotate the mount around the bar. The moment isn’t that great, but bars use a silly slot to retain a couple of large square head bolts. In normal use, these aren’t really loaded very much, but they’re not designed to resist rotation of what is attached to the bars. Without the tray to resist rotation, I fear that the thin aluminum slots would quickly fatigue and then snap off on the highway so I clamped everything with two stainless hose clamps.

With square load bars this is not an issue as the fork mount is clamped all the way around the bar, so even if it did rotate, which is unlikely, there wouldn’t be a catastrophic failure. Here is the fork mount flying in the breeze so to speak:

And here is the bike mounted on the rack, note how close the front fender is to hitting the roof:

Not wishing to mar the caps by using pliers and some kind of padding to remove them, I have searched unsuccessfully for the proper tool and not only haven’t I found one but I haven’t found any record of one in TA literature, etc. I decided to make a few by drawing them and having them cut with a laser cutter, which at least where I go is very affordable.

The place where I went takes encapsulated postscript files (EPS), so I just drew the wrench in AutoCad and then opened it in Illustrator and saved it as an EPS file.

Knowing that the laser has a slight width or kerf, I drew the shape at exactly the size of the dust cap, hoping that the thickness of the beam would remove just enough extra material to allow me to get the spanner on the dust cap. I had him cut these out of 16 gauge (roughly 1/16″ thick) stainless thinking that would be plenty strong enough.

When I got them back, they fit absolutely perfectly, but I noticed two small issues: 1) While 1/16″ thick stainless steel is probably strong enough, the dust caps are aluminum and teeth that thin would probably bite into the aluminum if I ever had a really stuck dust cap and 2) when the laser starts and stops a cut it removes a bit of extra material. For whatever reason the laser started and stopped the inner cutout right at a tooth, weakening one of the three teeth on each spanner.

To solve both of these issues I simply glued two spanners together with Marine 5200, being careful to alternate the flawed teeth.

If you want to have some of these cut for yourself, here is the EPS file:

http://pfffffffft.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/ta-pedal-tool-eps.pdf

WordPress doesn’t allow EPS files, so I added the PDF extension. Download the file (right click on the link and save as…) and replace the PDF extension with an EPS extension and you can then open it in Illustrator.

One thing to be cautious of: if you make some of these, the kerf size increases with the thickness of the material, so the tool may fit too loosely. Check with the laser operator. Currently the shape is drawn at the exact size of the dust cap and the kerf with 16 gauge stainless shrinks it just enough for a snug fit.

Above is a conceptual sketch for a low-rider attachment for rando racks on bikes without low rider bosses.

I had been looking at different ideas for front racks for my Circle A which is really designed as a Sportif, because I couldn’t resist providing for the option of carrying a small front load in addition to the frontbag/handlebar bag that will go on the rando rack.

There have been a good number of variations over the years on the “low rider” attachments to french style rando racks. Look at this beautiful Boxer rack, which attaches to the dropout at the bottom and the small rando rack at the top:

or the Grand Bois, which is a little more contemporary as it bolts to separate low rider bosses in addition to the rando rack and the dropout:

These racks were traditionally designed for Sologne/Berthoud style panniers which differ from Ortlieb style bags in that the French bags have their attachment points at the top edge of the bag, whereas the Ortliebs mounting rail is about 3-4 inches lower. On the same rack, the Ortliebs will sit 3-4 inches higher.

Additionally, since most of the French bikes did not have low rider bosses, the bags were generally centered over the axle, rather than further back close to the steering axis as you see on modern low riders.

I like my Ortliebs and wanted to see if I could find a way to mount them lower and further back, without providing low rider bosses, partially because I think a lot of people might find the design useful, but mostly because I didn’t want to look at the empty low rider bosses for the 95% of the time that I would not have the low rack attached. Additionally, I thought there was a certain elegance to the lines of the rack that was lost when I drew it with a low rider boss.

The rack as drawn will result in the center of the Ortliebs being at the height of the axle, but pushed back so the steering axis passes through the center of the bag projected onto it (as the axis passes between the two bags, not through them).

I hope this will result in minimal wheel flop and good handling on a low trail bike.

Worse than just the resulting giant potholes are the pavement seams that can be just as deep but almost invisible until you’re right on them. In this case, I was going downhill at about 25 mph and changing lanes, so I was looking back over my shoulder leaning back with all my weight on the rear wheel. I turned around just in time to see my front wheel drop into a three inch wide and four inch deep seam between the lanes. My unloaded front wheel skipped lightly but violently (if that makes any sense) off the front edge of the hole. With my entire weight, the rear hit the front edge of the seam like a sack of potatoes, the 35mm Paselas more getting out of the way than anything else. Worse still, the rim didn’t hit squarely but rather it only hit on the left side, perhaps as I was crossing towards that side.

Amazingly, I did not crash or even flat, and the rim stayed perfectly true within the pads, if you excuse the fold in the braking surface. It was about 1/2″ closer to the hub, however. The force was great enough to partially pull spokes two spokes away through the wall of the rim as the rim tried to expand over there to make up for its collapsing at the point of impact.

Perhaps on a lighter rim I would have crashed.

I have no idea where I got a bookmark for this website, as I don’t remember coming across it. Combined with the fact that the Japanese fonts aren’t coming through and even if they did I don’t read Japanese, I can convincingly say I know nothing about this site, but it sure has some cool stuff:

Bicycles in old age of Japan (website)

Like this “Eddy Merckx” mixte Randonneur as well as plenty of other French style bikes

and lots of bizzaro bikes and parts:

Overall, I’d say the results are excellent for the first bend, though the blade wasn’t bent all the way to the tip.

Since the restraint needed to be mounted to the table, Brian raised the block up off the table a little so he wasn’t grabbing the very tip of the blade. Additionally, he forgot to install the bracket that holds the end of the mandrel in place. Combined with the fact that the restraint is no longer tied to the block directly, this allowed the block to move a little relative to the restraint. As a result, you can see that while the blade is beautifully bent, with no rippling or bending in the upper portion of the blade, the tip of the blade is not bent as it raised a bit off the block.

Installing a base so that the block isn’t flying in the air and installing an angle iron at the end should fix things, but if there is still movement, he can install a strap that ties the block directly to the restraint, somewhat like the original drawing, but perhaps a bit lighter since he has the restraint bolted to the table and all he needs to do is prevent them from separating.

Here is the blade:

and another shot of the complete bender:

I suggested a couple of slight mods to fine tune the power of the arm, but Brian says he can easily bend the blade with one hand.

Hoohah!

The headlight replacement bulb has the same size base as the Lumotec bulb, but it is the type with two bumps on the base. The Lumotec bulb has a slightly wider shoulder, with a small notch in it. I ground off the bumps on the LED replacement and now it fits and works great. It seems to be much brighter than the halogen bulb, though it may lose a little of the focus. It is not nearly as bright or well focused as my Edelux however.

It is the taillight that I am stoked about, though. My initial impression is that this is brighter than an old school taillight, but not as bright as some of the newer Busch and Muller taillights out there. The standlight lasts as long as on my factory LED taillights. I will try and post some comparison shots.

I, too, am a fan of fork blades with a sharp low bend and read John Clay’s article in Bicycle Quarterly (Spring 2009) with interest. My friends at Circle A Cycles are building a frame  for me and I asked if they could make a fork with blades like the ones that John Clay’s bender produces.

Chris asked if I could draw the new bender and mandrel that would be required, so I studied the Clay bender and produced this drawing.

I spent a lot of time thinking about pivot and pulley placement and how they affect the mechanical advantage of the bender. It turns out that the ideal location(s) are off the mandrel, but knowing them can help find the best realistic location for the pivot. Additionally, in placing these two points, you need to be careful not to have the pulley run off the end of the fork blade before you’ve reached the proper rake.

With that said, I think that this bender’s pivot placement will be an improvement on the John Clay bender.

When choosing pivot and pulley placement, the idea is to maximize angular movement for the bending arm for the desired rake. That is to say, mechanical advantage comes not only from the length of the bending arm, but also from locating the pivot/pulley such that the arm moves through a greater angle than the blade.

For example, if by bending the blade so that the tip is effectively at a 70 degree angle, the bending arm moves through 105 degrees, you have a mechanical advantage of 1.5, just due the greater angular motion of the bending arm. This would make a 2 foot arm equivalent to a 3 foot arm.

It’s also possible to have a mechanical advantage less than 1 due to poor pivot/pulley placement. This would occur if in bending the blade through a given angle, the bending arm moved through a lesser angle. This would effectively make a bending arm behave as if it were shorter than it actually is.

Once Chris has this set up, I’ll post with a report as well as any modifications we make.

I’ve never seen a replacement bulb with a standlight. I am somewhat paranoid about being rear ended while waiting to take a left turn, so I appreciate a rear standlight.

I know that others have taken the guts of a B&M LED taillight and inserted them into their custom made or antique chassis, but that can really turn into a project; plus you end up gutting a beautiful old light or spending a lot on a custom chassis.

Then I saw this:

It looks like this will pop right in old taillights, could be pretty bright, and provide a standlight. Looks too good to be true.

Unfortunately I can’t find these anywhere in the U.S. and while there is a German eBay store that sells them, they not only won’t ship to the U.S., but you can’t use a U.S. eBay account to, say, ship them to a friend in Europe. Currently, I don’t know anyone in Europe that I could ask to purchase these so I am a bit out off luck.

I would love to hear if anyone has these or has any other info regarding using them with classic taillights.

The supporting paper in draft form is available here.