Front luggage

[CJ]

There's no way on God's green earth you'll find me spending 60 quid on a handlebar rack. £90 is utter madness.

I'm right with you there!

Jack the Rack is another of those bits of bikepacking nonsense that pop a small amount of cargo into or onto something that weighs quite enough already empty! This one's 700g without any bag to put stuff in. Add that and the cargo/container weight ratio will barely be 5:1. Regular carriers with panniers are typically 10:1.

[andrew_s]

It's an option.

There might be extra weight, but if you've got a carbon gravel bike or a full suspension mountain bike, you can fit a Jack the Rack, Bagman QR, and a Camper Longflap, and go off cycle camping in the wilds of wildest Scotland, and it's a fair bit cheaper than a new touring bike and rack/pannier set, and no bother with snagging on pathside heather either.

[hoogerbooger]

As an illustration, even with non-flapping bags/items on the front:
P3270122.JPG
My Blackburn alloy low riders failed in Tibet, shaken to death on bumpy roads...

As further illustration, I have previously posted the bodge I ended up with to get me to Katmandu:
P4100021.JPG

That's not a Blackburn low rider. I can't be certain what brand it is, but I had one like it (may still have it in storage) with those distinctive brackets (that Blackburn never had anything like) crimped onto the top rail. The rear rack in your first picture looks like a Tortec Expedition, (NOT a great design, lacking the structural triangulation of the legs that made Blackburn so much better than anything before) so maybe the front is an old Tortec model.

I am outraged by these loose and fast nasturtiums.

Feeling that CJ must be right and me wrong ( and having nothing better to do than a have cup of tea after a ride on my Raleigh Randonneur, what the low riders were borrowed off, before their accident......I thought I'd do some research, wondering if I needed to sue Raleigh. However maybe I need to see CJ in court instead for the assertions ?)

Evidence Item 1) - the lowriders in question ( cos I couldn't leave them in a foreign land):

Evidence Item 2) - Extract from Raleigh Lightweights 1989 Catalogue(readily available online):

So do I get an apology ? or do I need to sue Raleigh ?


( Yeh, rear rack was a Tortec. I ditched it after that trip for Tubus front and back)

[djb]

I'll dig out my slightly later Blackburn front rack, circa 1990, and take a photo of it.
It differs from your in that it has a flat metal section welded to the top horizontal piece (which makes it impossible without modification to use ortliebs with their enclosing top system that cannot enclose the top rail due to this piece running the length of the top rail)

[hoogerbooger]

Yes that sounds like the pictures I'm finding. I suspect deliberate wording from Raleigh marketing to make one assume it's a Blackburn front....when that's not actually what they say.

( certainly not going to take CJ to court as it sounds like he's had some practice as an expert witness)

[djb]

crap photo, and I couldnt be bothered to unpack it properly, would have to take container down and such,

so Halloween severed hand in there.....

you can see the blackburn name embossed on that little bit in middle

[andrew_s]

Those are what I got with my Randonneur, with the plate along the top. If you want to use modern panniers, you've got to make a hole in the plate to allow the anti-jump catch to wrap under the rail.

There were also the Blackburn custom low riders, with no loop over the top of the wheel. They don't work with modern panniers either, because the plastic hooks are too fat to go in the front part of the rail, where the rail from the inside of the fork blade and the rail from the outside of the fork blade come together.

The bike (1989, iirc) was a similar vintage to the ad above, dark grey with white head tube, 18 speed deore with biopace etc. The first change was swapping the rear wheel for one with a 6 speed cassette hub, rather than the screw-on block it came with.

[djb]

Those are what I got with my Randonneur, with the plate along the top. If you want to use modern panniers, you've got to make a hole in the plate to allow the anti-jump catch to wrap under the rail.

There were also the Blackburn custom low riders, with no loop over the top of the wheel. They don't work with modern panniers either, because the plastic hooks are too fat to go in the front part of the rail, where the rail from the inside of the fork blade and the rail from the outside of the fork blade come together.

The bike (1989, iirc) was a similar vintage to the ad above, dark grey with white head tube, 18 speed deore with biopace etc. The first change was swapping the rear wheel for one with a 6 speed cassette hub, rather than the screw-on block it came with.

ya, I considered making holes for the ortlieb anti jump thing, but figured it wasnt worth it, given that I wanted to get a sturdier rack anyway.
My bike, pictured earlier in this topic, was just at the 7 speed era and cassette--but it also had the same Biopace crankset (which my knees didnt like and so changed the rings after a season)

[ChrisF]

I read through the earlier part of this thread a while ago and as a result decided to add front racks and panniers to my bike before starting a tour later this month . I've not toured with front panniers before, but this time wanted to take extra 'stuff' for camping comfort (getting old now, just turned 70). I've recently added an e-conversion to the bike (a Thorn Mercury) to enable me to get up the hills with 20kg of luggage.

On Thursday and Friday this week, I did a short test ride / camp, about 15 miles each way. I found the steering very hard work; my shoulders aching afterwards. So this morning I decided to try doing away with the front panniers, and loading the back more (stuffed more into the rear panniers and added a large dry sack sitting alongside the tent on top of the rack). It was only a short test ride (a couple of miles) but It felt so much eaiser to ride set up like that. The only negative was handling the bike when walking with it.

The e-conversion has the motor in the front wheel, so there's already 3kg extra there - maybe that's the reason? I did try to ensure that the front panniers had the lightest parts of my load.

I'll try to do a longer test with the two-pannier arrangement, but at present I'm undecided which method to use. Having only two panniers looses me the slack space I had reserved for shopping, but was thinking that could be sorted by using a lightweight packable rucksack (or a musette) for the few miles between shop and campsite.

[PT1029]

Chris F, did you use a "normal" rack (ie, something like a rear rack, but made for the front), or did you use low rider racks?
Normal racks, the whole front load swings through an arc when you steer.
Low riders, the load rotates with in its own axis as the load is more or less on the axis of rotation.

It might be a function of the bike's steering geometry. One of my bikes (relatively low trail) handles (steers) better with 4 panniers than none. Another bike with more trail/more wheel flop is hard work steering at low speed - starting off/slow hill climbing becomes a bit of a wrestling match with the handle bars, though very stable once on the open road. I'm treating myself to a new frame to get round the wrestling issue!

[cycle tramp]

I read through the earlier part of this thread a while ago and as a result decided to add front racks and panniers to my bike before starting a tour later this month . I've not toured with front panniers before, but this time wanted to take extra 'stuff' for camping comfort (getting old now, just turned 70). I've recently added an e-conversion to the bike (a Thorn Mercury) to enable me to get up the hills with 20kg of luggage.

On Thursday and Friday this week, I did a short test ride / camp, about 15 miles each way. I found the steering very hard work; my shoulders aching afterwards. So this morning I decided to try doing away with the front panniers, and loading the back more (stuffed more into the rear panniers and added a large dry sack sitting alongside the tent on top of the rack). It was only a short test ride (a couple of miles) but It felt so much eaiser to ride set up like that. The only negative was handling the bike when walking with it.

The e-conversion has the motor in the front wheel, so there's already 3kg extra there - maybe that's the reason? I did try to ensure that the front panniers had the lightest parts of my load.

I'll try to do a longer test with the two-pannier arrangement, but at present I'm undecided which method to use. Having only two panniers looses me the slack space I had reserved for shopping, but was thinking that could be sorted by using a lightweight packable rucksack (or a musette) for the few miles between shop and campsite.

I believe that Thorn envisaged the Mercury as a 'light' touring bike. It may be worth talking to Saint John Street Cycles but 20kg of luggage + 3kg of motor, batteries and wiring doesn't strike me as 'light touring' - indeed, a load of 23kg is something that even I would think twice about carrying on my bike which uses a Thorn raven frame, and would bring me quite close to the safety limit of my handlebars...

[pwa]

My own preference with (low rider) front panniers is to keep them lightly laden and use them partly as overflow for shopping bought near the end of a day's ride. I think the last time I used mine I had a lightweight sleeping bag in each (mine and my wife's) and flip-flops, then a few groceries bought just before arriving at our destination. Handling is fine with those on my tourer, with a very rigid Tubus rack that has a connecting tube around the front of the wheel. Mine are quite old but still look like new: https://spacycles.co.uk/m5b0s79p4482/TU ... -Stainless
That rack is a work of art. The photo doesn't do it justice.

But that rack puts Ortlieb panniers very low and wouldn't work well for anyone planning to thread their way through undergrowth. On road and on reasonable tracks it is a great set-up.

[ChrisF]

Chris F, did you use a "normal" rack (ie, something like a rear rack, but made for the front), or did you use low rider racks?
Normal racks, the whole front load swings through an arc when you steer.
Low riders, the load rotates with in its own axis as the load is more or less on the axis of rotation.

It's this one: https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/carriers-ra ... ront-rack/ so it's a low-rider. The fork is a Surly one: https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/forks/surly ... eel-black/ which Robin at SJS said should be OK for a Mercury (and is has thick enough dropouts to take the torque from the motor, unlike the fork that was on the bike before - not a Thorn one, someone had changed it before I purchased the bike second-hand.)

I believe that Thorn envisaged the Mercury as a 'light' touring bike. It may be worth talking to Saint John Street Cycles but 20kg of luggage + 3kg of motor, batteries and wiring doesn't strike me as 'light touring' - indeed, a load of 23kg is something that even I would think twice about carrying on my bike which uses a Thorn raven frame, and would bring me quite close to the safety limit of my handlebars...

Yes, you may have a point, but I only weigh 60kg myself. Presumably an 80kg rider would be OK with 10kg of luggage on a Mercury?
There wasn't any wobble or anything, it all felt very stable, just hard work turning the bars.
The Mercury has drop bars, which are of course narrower than straight ones - perhaps that's part of the problem.

[djb]

There wasn't any wobble or anything, it all felt very stable, just hard work turning the bars.
The Mercury has drop bars, which are of course narrower than straight ones - perhaps that's part of the problem.

No way for us to know what your bikes actually feels like, but this sounds very much like you are simply unfamiliar with riding a loaded bike with front panniers.
It is what it is, and we get used to it-to the point that when you ride unloaded again, you feel like the bike weighs like a feather and steers at mach speed.

[CJ]

{picture of Raleigh catalogue}
So do I get an apology ? or do I need to sue Raleigh ?

I think you'll find a line in Raleigh's catalogue something along the lines of "We reserve the right to tweak the specification, to deal with supply problems etc". In this case they probably got complaints about how the abovementioned plate makes Blackburn's original low-loaders look ugly and difficult to fit quite a lot of panniers onto, both of which are fair comment. The substitute was probably cheaper, looks neat and fits most everything. Just maybe it's not quite as tough.