Two handlebar tourer (Dawes Galaxy)

Yeah straight on the quill with 2 shims. I have dreams about a 1" ahead stem to reduce the shimmage or a custom 22.2mm one, but that would be silly. It would be easier to have 2 handlebars on a 1 1/8" fork - you'd just need 2 ahead stems.

1 Attachment

You're alright, thanks for the story :)

I've been wanting a porteur rack with low rider pannier rails for a while, but the ones I've seen with that functionality seem overkill and are crazy expensive.

I love the simplicity of the tubus tara which is great for low rider panniers. So I decided to mimic its design but using the old bent forks which initiated this build and, wait for it, 3 tent poles on top to make a platform - take note @nick_h.

If you ever want to feel truly alive I can recommend setting up a rack like this just in time to cycle fully loaded to Victoria for the train to Newhaven to catch a ferry to Dieppe. Miraculously it held up for that journey, and the subsequent tour down to Marseille, and I used it around town for a while after that. It was pretty good but ultimately the platform wasn't very sturdy, and there wasn't much support for the bottom of the panniers. If I had more time it would be fun to work on these issues, but life is short and there are better racks out there. Also, a stray football in a park snapped one of the tent poles.

I can't find any good photos of the rack right now, but here are a few including my mate testing trotify. It might look bonkers to stick another pair of forks on the bike but this setup was actually lighter than most big porteur racks (and admittedly less functional).

2 Attachments

A couple of weeks ago I bought this monstrosity on eBay. It's a Nitto Campee 34F aka Big Front Rack and from what I can tell it was commissioned by Rivendell a while ago. It's a bit of a weird design - the bolt slots in the middle don't match up to any fork eyelets so you're supposed to use p-clips or bodge your own struts from the eyelets. Also the slots look nearly parallel to the tangential movement you'd get from rotating the rack around the mounting point at the dropout, so not very adjustable. It's not a proper platform on top but it is quite wide and very long so I think I'll be able to strap a lot on there. To start I'll probably try a basket with zip ties.

1 Attachment

I'm pleased with the rack. It's pretty solid. 966 grams without bolts, not that it matters. I want it mounted as far back and low as possible, and that will take some bodging because the cable hanger is in the way of the top tube. I also need the rack to be a bit further back for the p-clip to attach this way. I was debating whether the top tube is really necessary, but just had a thought. What if the top tube was the cable hanger?

In general I like stuff to be modular so e.g. I can take the rack off without having to fiddle with the brake. But I'm hoping this rack will be a permanent fixture, so I'm tempted to do it. I'm thinking a hole in the top to take the brake outer, and a small hole in the bottom of the same tube for the cable to pass through. And maybe a hacksaw slice through half the tube vertically, connecting the holes so the brake can be detached quickly without undoing the cable.

Is this silly? The canti yoke might rub on the tube below. I guess water getting into the tubes is also a worry. Maybe I could bung them up with expanding foam after drilling? I think the material is nickel plated CrMo. Will the surface around the holes rust badly?

1 Attachment

I dunno about the canti business but wtaf is this thing??

1 Attachment

Wow, a trotify in the wild.

Yeah it makes your bike a horse. It's not mine, this was a relatively recent prototype being tested.

I'm doing the brake cable through the rack thing. Although I want to avoid drilling a big hole in the rack, so I bought a block of aluminium for a couple of quid and spent last night & this morning fashioning a cable stop out of it, which will sit on top of the rack. Pretty pleased with the result given my amateur skills in the workshop.

I drilled a 5.5mm hole in the top to take the brake outer, or a v-brake noodle, followed all the way through with a 3mm hole to take the inner cable + plastic sleeve. Then drilled a 9mm hole perpendicular (the diameter of the rack tubing), hacksawed off the excess & smoothed down with a bench grinder & sandpaper.

Next thing is to drill a 3mm hole through the rack which I'm slightly cacking my pants about.

2 Attachments

Awesome bike

Sheldon brown was a proponent of double bar bikes;

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/org/thorn-index.html

Sheldon was a visionary, a freethinker. It's a bonkers double cable setup on that front brake.

I seem to remember there was also an eccentric Austrian who toured the world with double bars but I can't find them now.

My bike is finally getting the low trail conversion I've been holding in my head for years. To begin with I'll run a 26" wheel on the front which will steepen the slack tubes and probably have some other undesired side effects.

I got a good deal on these ebay forks and they just arrived. I'm going to try get them re-raked to 60-65mm. Very excited. No idea what the double eyelets on one side are for.

1 Attachment

maybe it would be a decent place to put a light bracket? and use the other one as a fag holder

you're going 26 inch on the front and 700c on the rear and using a fork with 60/65mm offset? is there any way to work out a trail figure on that roughly cause that sounds incredibly low trail to me!

622mm - 559mm(26inch wheel) = 63
divided by two that give you a 31.5mm drop at the front if you use the same sized tyre.
From what I can tell that is going to steepen your angles by something like 3 degrees.
I'm assuming you would opt for a big tyre in the front to increase pneumatic trail to help make it rideable and this would also lessen the drop at the front.
There's a non negligible chance everything I just said was pure bollocks.

I seem to remember there was also an eccentric Austrian who toured the world with double bars but I can't find them now.

Probably Heinz Stucke? Edit, dunno if this pic is actually him though the bike looks different.

Yes! He's German, not Austrian.

1 Attachment

I think the front is going to drop by about 40mm. 31.5mm from the wheel change, minus maybe 8mm for the tyre difference (42s vs 32s on the back). But the axle-to-crown of the new fork is 13mm less and increasing the rake will reduce that even more, maybe another 4mm. So yeah, quite a drop.

If my trigonometry serves me the change in tube angles is 180*arctan(drop/wheelbase)/PI. My wheelbase is 1070mm so that's a bit more than 2 degrees. I don't actually know the current head tube angle but I'm guessing 71, it's pretty slack. So I expect a 73-74 degree head tube which, with a 60mm offset fork, would give 31-37mm trail. I think you're right, 65mm offset would be too much.

1 Attachment

trigonometry! that'll do it ha. I'd be really interested to know what a bike with such low trail feels like to ride. Are you worried about getting a good fit with a steep seat angle?

I'm not sure about the seat tube, it's pretty slack now so don't think it'll be too bad. I should measure the angles properly. I'm more worried about the reach to the drops. And the BB will be pretty low to the ground, 255mm I think, but I have clown bike cranks so that should be ok. I'm hoping these forks will get me the front end geometry with minimal effort. If the seat tube and reach are problematic I reckon it could be fixed by chopping some length off the top tube and down tube, and replacing the head tube.

As for what low trail feels like - it's like heaven, especially through the corners. Obviously I've never actually ridden a low trail bike, except maybe a cargo bike, but I have skimmed through a decade's worth of online hype and nuanced debate. I'm so ready to join the low trail army. I'm going to start slagging off Grant from Rivendell and saying lots of Heineous things.

I threw some wheels and the new forks onto this very similar Galaxy I've been hoarding. It's one size smaller than the one I ride and slightly different geo but I think it looks good, might swap.

Also used an app to measure the tube angles. As I estimated above, everything gets about 2 degrees steeper with the new forks + 26" x 42mm front wheel. This is without the extra fork rake, but also without a crown race or bearings, so that probably cancels out.

The BB is not as low as I feared - 272mm on this frame (with new forks and mismatched wheels).

But the seat tube is much steeper than I thought - nearly 77 degrees with the new forks! Thanks for the warning @Crunty. I think this'll put the saddle about 20mm closer to the BB horizontally.

1 Attachment

I took a trip down to see the wizard of hither green, so good.

4 Attachments

I've installed the forks, and a 26" wheel. I think I love it. The change in handling isn't as extreme as I expected but it is a lot more responsive and there's much less wheel flop.

The steerer on the new fork is very long for the frame, but instead of chopping it down and re-cutting the thread I'm running it threadless, with the ahead stem mounted on the steerer as intended (it was on the quill before). Of course, having the quill in the steerer means no star nut / top cap to pre-tension the headset, but a threaded locknut is doing the job nicely.

I'm super happy with the rack mods especially as it was all done by eye - so grateful to Winston for going along with my weird requests. The tabs were chopped off the bottom & brazed onto the next rail up which means the rack is now as low as possible. There's a brake hanger brazed onto the top which is much better than my previous efforts. And the repurposed slotted rack struts between the mid-fork barrels allow some adjustment in the fit (W's idea).

4 Attachments

Sorry about the AI bokeh.

Nice! Interesting thread to follow. Shouldn't you have a double lock-nut on the steerer? Is this getting a 26"rear wheel or are you leaving it like this?