A place to ask bicycle repair questions, and for bike shop monkeys to share advanced non commercial wrenching resources (no YouTube self promotion). This is only for repair related topics.
Any brands that sell a rack like the one in the picture? (Edit: what i like from this rack is the mounting points on the frame that will result in a more comfortable ride than carrying the weight on the handlebars or fork))
If not do you recommend someone that can make this without breaking the bank? (I grew up in an agricultural area and there were a lot of folks that could weld something like that for a small fee - but some people online are charging 300+ for this, which is insane)
I found one on Amazon, DutchDog Britch front/rear bicycle rack hitch. The brand is Britch. $79.00 and a 3.8 rating.
Not bad! Thanks
I think that is something someone made themselves. The mounting holes for the basket are most telling. I've never seen anything like that.
I'm very skeptical of this as well. If that basket is loaded heavily. it is likely going to cause problems with steering due to trail and rake dynamics against leverage forces altering the center of gravity overall.
One of the things I really like about bicycles is that they really push one's understanding of dynamics. For an automobile, putting a heavy load ahead of the front axle, or behind the rear axle, tends to reduce stability. The cure for that would be to distribute the load evenly, front to back. So a heavy load (eg an engine) in the front can be countered with a load in the back, acting like a seesaw.
But that same trick doesn't guarantee success for loading a bicycle, because bikes need front-to-back stability in addition to roll stability. This arises because when turning, bikes have to bank to one side while also turning. To use aircraft terminology, there is a coupling between the roll and yaw axis.
Ships use a keel to independently stabilize the roll axis, but bikes can't just stick a keel into the ground, so must rely on tire resistance, which is coupled to the steering direction. What this means is that for some ways of loading a bicycle, it may genuinely end up being unrideable at any speed, in any direction.
The simplistic rules for land vehicle stability are to keep loads within the wheelbase, and preferring closeness to the axle's height, with the peak height at the exact middle of the wheelbase. For a standard bicycle, the rider is the biggest load and is positioned optimally per these rules; history shows that some really tall bikes work just fine.
The one I like to mention to really twist someone's mind on this subject is that, when leaning, you're actually counter steering the opposite direction. Then, in a controlled safe place I tell them to try and turn at speed while consciously weighting the outside pedal in the down position while intentionally pressing down with force to weight the inside drop. This is how you turn as fast and tight as possible. Anyone that does not know this will have a major lightbulb moment when they suddenly learn such a pronounced fundamental handling principal that is not part of the intuitive natural learning process.
Why does the outside petal need to be down?
...pressing down with force to weight the inside drop.
To make sure I understand you, you're saying apply your weight on the inside of the turn,
It is the logical pedal configuration for clearance. So inside (of turn) pedal high; outside pedal low. Putting your weight on the outside, means just add a little bit of conscious effort and force into the foot on the outside. Likewise, just think about your hand on the inside of the turn and press down consciously, it doesn't take much.
Practice this in an area where you will not hit the inside of the turn and crash; somewhere open, like a parking lot. It may surprise you at how much faster you can turn at speed. Please don't let yourself get hurt learning this. I've seen it happen before.
This is a CAT 4 level amateur racing skill for being in tight quarters racing at full race speed. It is the key to not losing all of your speed in much tighter turns.
Thanks I'll try this with a helmet and gloves
I'm curious to know what makes this more of a comfortable ride than if the basket or rack was mounted to the handlebars and fork? I could understand the steering being less "tippy" but I would also guess that there is a reason that racks are almost always mounted to the dropouts and handlebars.
It relates to the headtube angle, and contact patch where the tire meets the ground, aka trail. Bikes that are designed to carry weight on the front have a very different geometry. They typically have a tall and steep headtube without much tilt back towards the rider. They also typically have a longer wheelbase, aka distance between the contact patch of the front and rear tires. The chainstays also tend to be longer. All of these changes make the ride feel sluggish without weight, and are the key factors of handling and steering. In other words, a road race bike versus a road touring bike geometry, but all bicycles have these same factors. Practically speaking, it is the difference between leaning into turns to steer and turning with the handlebars more, which also impacts high speed stability versus low speed stability.
As a former Buyer for a chain of shops. I only need to see a bike's headtube to tell what it was designed for and its size. The only exception to this rule is extremely compact mountain and triathlon bikes where I need a few other visual clues due to a lack of substantial variation in the headtube across sizes.
Let me illustrate the point to hopefully make the concepts more tangible.
I learned the hard way about bicycle weight and handling properties. When I got my first job in a bike shop I rode 33 miles each way every day. I tried racks and stuff on a road bike, and a touring bike with panniers. I was fastest and safest by riding a backpack 2 days a week on a road race bike with strategic clothes caching to keep that trek around 1.5 hours each way.
A seatpost mounted bag rack on a road race bike, weighed down, causes the bike to handle badly. You might think, like I did in my twenties, that the weight will act on the seatpost no different than if wearing a backpack, but that is not the case. Think of it like this, if you need to brake hard and fast you get off the saddle and hang your weight off the back of the bike as far back and low as possible while pulling both brakes. Your feet are still on the pedals, but your center of gravity has shifted rearwards to make you stop faster, so you are already naturally shifting weight to change handling. The center of gravity impacts how the bike self corrects from leaning forces and does not require input to maintain a straight line when moving. If the weight is shifted rearward overall, the bike will feel like your inputs are sluggish and lagging behind like there is a disconnect between input and motion. If the weight is overall forward, leaning will feel very unstable and steering will feel like a very small input causes too much motion; it will feel very unstable.
If front panniers are added to a bike that is designed for them, they are designed to treat the front fork like its own independent geometry system. The goal is to distribute the weight on both sides of the trail and steering center line (like a line projected down the middle of the head tube center to the ground). The bike will have a smaller distance between these two points - trail and steering center, and weight should be distributed evenly between these. A setup like this will feel like a heavier front end, but stable and predictable with both leaning and steering inputs. Any solid obstruction around the front wheel will make crosswind forces impact the steering and this can be very disconcerting at first. It is a very pronounced phenomenon on road race bikes with large front carbon wheels due to the low weight and surface area. Even on a touring bike, front panniers should be a last resort only used when absolutely required, due to the negative effects.
That is the basic gist of geometry and how loading impacts handling dynamics.
Thanks for the interesting read. I don't have anything to add, but I appreciate the detailed info/analysis!
I don't like any extra weight on the front axis, too. It makes steering less direct and more strenuous and destabilises the bike by a lot. Once rode a bike with a front basket attached to the frame (bike sharing), and that felt much better as the front wheel handled lightly as usual.
Maybe try Wald?
https://waldsports.com/store/front-baskets/
Depending on what mounting points your bike has, you could also get a "porteur" style front rack with a large platform, and then attach a separate basket. That would probably cost more than the Wald baskets but might be stronger for carrying heavy loads. See the Specialized and Old Man Mountain "pizza racks" for example. Soma, Surly, and Nitto also make racks like that.
Edit: nevermind, I completely missed that you want the basket mounted to the frame and not the fork.
Good luck finding one. This is one thing I really love about my Tern folding bike - the "luggage truss" allows me to mount a front rack or basket to the frame without it having any effect on handling. It's like it doesn't have any extra weight at the front when you've got something loaded up there!
I'd love to have something similar for regular bikes, so I'll be keeping an eye on this thread!
I found, what might be the same one that you showed, it's David Hembrow-sturdy Dutch-made load carrying front bike rack. Hembrow. eu
I cant find any sellers online for that one!