Mid-reach caliper and front rack - elegant solutions, if any?

[Daschund]

I'm building a frame (for myself) to work with mid-reach caliper brakes and I'm thinking doing a front rack as well. With cantis or centerpulls with posts you can always use the posts, but with calipers it gets complicated. Somehow all the options for upper mount I've seen are not very appealing to my eye. I think I'm going with bend tube that goes over the caliper and attaches behind the brake, front of the crown. Under the brake would also be acceptable, but if you guys have any input, please share!

[Andrew R Stewart]

Blackburn's first generation of front racks used an around the sides and attaching to the brake bolt on the back side design. These worked well as a rack mount but had some interference with brake calipers (this in a era when cantis were few). The second generation of B's front racks used a SS strip which was both adjustable in length as well as went over the top side of the caliper and down along the front of the crown, attaching between the crown and the caliper to it's bolt. More adjustable but also had some interference with center pull caliper arms and cross wires.

These are some of the reasons that many constructors will install top of crown (or along the top outer side of crowns) threaded bosses (much like water bottle cage mounts). Also having two attachment points help the strength/stiffness of the rack.

As a small guy who always has an issue with bars that can't be set lower then the saddle when the front end of the bike gets too tall, I'd avoid adding more dimension to the rim to crown seat dimension with an under the caliper rack mounting. Andy.

[EricKeller]

the attachment at the top doesn't do much on most racks, just keeps it from tilting

[Andrew R Stewart]

I was thinking about the wiggle forces being better braced. Wiggle as in side to side. A single attachment point at the brake bolt isn't as stiff as a two point attachment, especially if the rack struts have some triangulation to their arrangement. Andy.

[Alistair]

I'm thinking doing a front rack as well.

What size rack, what kind of loads?

Alistair.

[blasdelf]

The style of using a stainless strap tang under the crown or around the brake should be considered a last resort, it's flexy, takes up room in exactly the wrong place, and is susceptible to sudden fatigue failures.

There are two good ways of attaching a rack with a caliper brake — the cleanest is using bosses on the the sides of the crown:




There's also the more general and reusable "Reacharound" style:

[Daschund]

Thanks for all the input!

Just to clear things: This bike will be my all-weather road bike with fenders. I wouldn't have other bikes for road. I have a Gilles Berthoud front bag, 2286. I've used it before with Nitto M12 rack and that worked quite well, allthough the rack was sitting a bit too high.

The rides I normally do are between fast 50km loops to 150km slower, steady-paced rides. I just moved to another town and figured out there's quite good options on doing longer rides, over 200km. I really like the function of a front bag, instead of stuffing bananas and all of that into jerseys rear pockets. The loads wouldn't be anything more than something to eat, rain jacket and maybe some warmers and a wallet.

With the rack build I'm aiming for lightness and simplicity. The rack would stay there permanently and that's the reason why I thought the under the brake -mount would be the best - visually it's the least visible option. But as blasdelf mentioned, that takes up room and I know that with mid-reachs there isn't much of it. My second option is to add bottle cage bosses on the crown, but on the top of the shoulders instead of the sides. I have one Paris-Brest -crown rolling around and there's plenty of room for those. Visually this isn't as pleasing, but I know it adds rigidity.

Rack platform would be like a wider Nitto M12.

[Daschund]

Here's couple pics of what I'm talking about:

Nitto M12 modded to work with calipers.



Ant rack