Front rack hackathon/QR rando bag

Thought I'd do a thread on the subject. If, like me, you've been thinking about a lightweight black front mini rack + QR bag setup for mid fork mounts for years and not found anything even remotely suitable, this could be interesting. Things in my mind really started when I saw this page

http://oceanaircycles.com/2014/09/10/pannier-hardware-decaleur-hack/

And then this

http://theradavist.com/2016/06/my-home-hacked-thomson-and-ortlieb-decaleur-morgan-taylor/#1

And this

http://smutpedaller.blogspot.se/2014/06/the-bar-bag-part-3-klickfix-modification.html?m=1

Plus some flickr stuff by Alex Whetmore about building your own decaleur and rack but I wasn't quite ready for that. Instead I've trawled the interwebz for a suitable otp option for a year and there is in short nothing to be found. Either the rack is huge and overbuilt like the surly/pizza or it's silver or it's not useable with mid fork mounts. So I had to make my own solution from bits and pieces. Using this to keep track of progress.

First I tried this, which is really for canti mounts

And the hacked off struts from a vavert advancer I had laying around.

But it sat way too high above the front wheel for the bag to fit in with all the cables and crap coming out around the stem. I've complicated things further by using a v-twin converter for the brakes so there's even less room.

Like this

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So my next idea is to use the vavert platform with the adjustable struts from the other rack. This means I need to make holes to bolt the struts to the rack through.

Cool, following!

Also what's that bag you have there? Trying to find something suitable for my Dad's front rack.

Also following.

This will be ace, or a spectacular crash risk.

I'll put this in hacks thread if you don't mind

Trying to find something suitable for my Dad's front rack.

Have you looked at the Mission Workshop duffle?
https://missionworkshop.com/collections/shoulder-duffle-bags

They can be carried as a standard duffle by handle or shoulder, but note that the straps at the bottom are for racks:

what's that bag

It's a bigxtop rando with some slight modifications to make sure the ortlieb bits fit.

Heat, smash, drill, file. @Velocio why do the attached pics appear randomly?

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Thanks, I'll look it up!

also thanks for the suggestion Velocio, looks great

In regards to the photos I find the easiest thing is to use an image hosting site, then embed them here in the order you want. (imgur has always been hassle free, and a nice user interface but there are loads)

why do the attached pics appear randomly?

Oh... not in upload order? That may be a bug for me to fix. I didn't realise it was out of sequence.

Not sure about uploaded order but did it from the phone album, clicked them in chronological order but they uploaded randomly.

Edit: nexus 5x running android 7 something

Author rack and vavert rack. Managed to get it a bit lower and hopefully this will make mounting the bag easier.

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Anymore details on the bike in this picture please??

Reverse image search:

https://www.pelagobicycles.com/bicycles/carhartt-x-pelago.html

hacks thread

Sure, haven't seen it myself but sounds interesting!

Edit- sorry, in reply to @Thrasher

Thanks very much and sorry to divert from your thread.

Looking to hack a rack meself. But a bagman type carradice rack, hanging off my handlebars, maybe with support coming from the caliper mount hole in the fork.
Interesting thread.

@dazzrie no worries, divert all you like!

@jontea sounds interesting, do post any ideas or pics of this.

In completely unrelated news, I found this excellent product while shopping for middle eastern food

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Made some progress today. First, rack to fork attachment hack.

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Then the bag mount stuff. I've thought about it for a while and at first I figured one of these bar extension things would be best. Like the first link in the first post.

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But then I found a cheap two-piece direct mount stem instead, seems way sturdier

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In a flash of genius (not really) I realised these things from an old rear rack would allow attaching a tubus strut to the direct mount stem.

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Hey presto! Some bits of left over tubing as spacers.

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