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PB Crown with Rack Bosses

I have been working with Kirk Pacenti of bikelugs.com fame to get the Paris Brest fork crown made with M5 rack bosses built into the shoulder of the crown during casting. I Samples are here and I am very excited for these.

Until now if you were working on a Porteur / Randonneur style of bike you options were limited to bosses that were hand brazed into the top of the fork. Having the bosses as an integral part of the casting will shave man hours and result in a stronger more consistent product. These crowns will make this style of front rack mount more approachable for builders and designers.

There are a couple of strong benefits to having crown mounted rack bosses. Foremost is the added stiffness you will get from a rack with two well spaced upper mounting points as opposed to the more common single point in the center. Running a close second is having redundancy of upper mounting points, two is better than one. If a bolt were to come loose or a rack strut fail, the loaded rack is less likely to immediately drop into the rider’s front wheel. I believe this mode of failure is more common than thought if the number CPSC recall notices on production front racks is any indicator.

I hope that by pushing this fork to market we will see an increase in the number of well designed front loading bikes and front racks on the market in the coming years. The crown specs are the same to the existing Paris Brest in every way other than the added rack bosses. Spacing between holes is 80mm. If we as designers and builders were to adopt this as a standard it will help with the proliferation of the niche. bringing a level of consistency across brands.

After talking with Kirk today, these crowns will be available through Bikelugs.com in 6-8 weeks.

Mark’s Rack Fit on the Rambler

The Rambler while a well handling bike with no load aside from the rider, is designed to ride well with a modest front load. As part of the design there are integral rack mounting points: two eyelets at each dropout, two mid fork hourglass mounts, a hole drilled through the crown at the traditional brake mounting point and two M5 bosses set into the shoulders of the fork crown. One of the questions that keeps comment up with the Rambler is what front rack do I recommend. In particular a rack that will work well with the rack mounting bosses located in the shoulders of the fork crown. While popular among custom bikes of this genre, this mount is less common on production bikes. By providing for two upper mounting points, the rack can be more stable and have redundancy. In the case that one upper mount should fail, loose a bolt etc., you have a second mount in place helping to prevent the load from crashing into the front tire. Trust me, loads into the tire are not a good thing. Solid rack mounting helps to keep things where they belong and you rolling safely.

The most versatile and well made small front rack on the market at the moment is the ‘Mark’s” rack produced by Nitto of Japan, and designed by Rivendell employee Mark Abel. This rack is made of brazed CrMo steel with a nickel plate finish for long corrosion free service. The mounting has provisions for four struts and a center bracket to the crown. These options allow it to easily mount to just about any bike as a strong and attractive solution. I have been using it on the Rambler with the central mount to the crown and the two front struts connected to the mid-fork. I recently replaces the central mount to the crown with two aluminum struts between the rack and the upper crown mounting points.

With the mount to the center of the crown the rack was stable, now it is rock solid. I had to reshape the supplied mounting struts a bit, hammer and bench vise. After trimming things to length it all bolted right up. While I knew it would fit fine, it is exciting when a plan comes together. Next, since I have a habit of fiddling with things, I will work out a way to attach the fender r added support and fine tune the fit.

The way I have it set up I can quickly install/remove the Bruce Gordon low-rider pannier rack. I will have a pictorial of this process in the next week. The keen of eye will notice that I have all of this mounted to a band clamp on the mid fork. Production Ramblers will have the hourglass mounted such that the racks will bolt right up. So far little details like this are all that needs to be adjusted between the samples and production. Testing continues, but I am ecstatic with how these are turning out.

Bruce Gordon Front Mountain Rack

I had this rack kicking around in the garage as a keeper from a craig’s list find. The Bruce Gordon Front Mountain Rack made it into my possession a couple of years back when I was lucky enough to be the first responder to an ad for a “grocery getter” that turned out to be a 1985 Specialized Stumpjumper Sport, thanks to sharp eyes, was wearing this rack. The bike was a very fun fire road machine, but had to go and now lives in the Pacific NW. The rack however, stayed on the shelf for a later project. Based on the Oregon location for Bruce’s shop on the sticker the rack is likely as old as the stumpjumper, Bruce is now in Petaluma, Ca.

I have been thinking about fitting a front rack to the Rawland, but after looking at the front racks available I was not really happy with what I saw. The most likely candidate was a Surly nice rack with a bit of grinding it could be made to work, but all that hardware looked like trouble for trail days. The BG rack was originally intended to clear the cantilever brakes that were popular for touring and off-road back in the 80’s, while keeping the bags clear of rocks and the load as close to the steering axis as possible. I had used the rack on the stumpy and it had actually helped with the handling of the older slack geometry. I pulled the rack down to see if and how it would play with the disc brake calipers on the Rawland.

Low and behold the fit was almost perfect. The biggest problem was with the design of the plug dropout and brazeon for the front fork. This has always been a problem with this bike and required spacers to bolt on just about anything. I mounted it up with 4mm of spacers, the original 2mm, a presta nut and the fender R-clip on each side. The top is held in place with clamps for now, but if need arises or I get this bike re-coated, brazeons will be added. I have now used the rack for a few weeks both on and off-road and it has been rock solid.

The load has little detrimental effect on the handling at all. I have used it mostly for errands and trips to the Sunday farmer’s market. Average loads are around 15 lbs and handling was fine. The heaviest was around 35, and yes the handling was a bit slow with that much weight in the front, but things never got out of control.

I would recommend this rack to anybody in the market for a front rack that can clear you brakes. This design proves to be fairly timeless as it predates the disc brake design by decades yet adapts easily. Bruce is still making and selling these, and you should look him up if you are in the market.