Help!! Carbon bike- don't want to sell, but touring to Italy

oilyribbons

Hi,

need some advice here people. I bought a boardman carbon road bike two months ago, but have since been made redundant. I don't want to sell it cos it's fantastic, but I don't think it's suitable for touring to Italy. I will be travelling light, 10kgs or less.

The bike doesn't have the extra holes in the seat stays for a cycle rack, and is basically not designed for touring. Has anyone used, or knows of, equipment (buckles, bolts, clips, cycle racks) that are compatible with road bikes?
Do any of these in the link below work?

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Cate ... goryID=312

advice would be much appreciated,
Oily

ride_whenever

p clips and a seatclamp that has built in mounting holes. That should be more than adequate for 10kg. I get the bike a full service before you go as well.

blu3cat

yep, used the topeak mtx a type.

Fits round your seatpost (mine was aluminium) and is rated up to 9KG.

Worked really well with a couple of caveats.

Get better bungees if you are going to be carrying near the limit of the rack, as it does have a propensity to dump heavier bags if you get a little bit of a wobble peddling hard up a hill or something similar.

Really alters the centre of gravity of the bike, moves it much higher (I had me luggage on the top of the rack). This was on a 14Kg hybrid, let alone what it would do on a sub 9KG road bike.

oilyribbons

You're a helpful bunch, much appreciated.

The tubus equipment looks very good
Thanks
Oily

bike_the_planet

ride_whenever wrote:

p clips and a seatclamp that has built in mounting holes. That should be more than adequate for 10kg. I get the bike a full service before you go as well.

I strongly advise against bolting any load-carrying extras to a carbon frame.

Carbon frames are designed with a very specific purpose in mind - usually as fast road bikes.

The problem with carbon is that it, whilst it is strong in tension it is not suitable for compression fittings such as P-clips. Doing so risks causing cracking to the frame with potentially nasty consequences. Many of the problems I have seen in carbon frames are due to over-zealous tightening of bolts causing compression failures of the epoxy.

By contrast, steel or aluminium is strong in all directions (isotropic), and can handle this sort of thing without any problem.

I suggest that you try to find a cheap hack/MTB that you can mount this sort of stuff on to go touring, particularly if you only do it occasionally. Save your road bike for its designed purpose - fast unladen riding..

If you want to go down the seatpost mounted rack option, then make sure your seatpost is aluminium and not carbon.

Cheers