front pannier for bike with no eyelets

yossarian82

Hi people. I am planning on taking my Surly Crosscheck over to France for a month and think that I will need more than just rear panniers for this amount of time as going alone and will be camping. Can anyone recommend a good front rack/low rider that can be attached to this bike as it does not have eyelets on the front forks? Or do you think I could get away with just the rears?
Thanks

jibi

http://www.oldmanmountain.com/Pages/RackPages/FrontRacks.html

or try st john's cycles who make thorn bikes they have front racks for forks with no eyelets

george

The Mechanic

I have just bought a Tubus Tara lowrider rack from Spa Cycles. My bike has mudguard eyes on hte front forks but no rack eyes so I also bought a set of fittings, also by Tubus and aslo from Spa. I haven't fitted them yet but they look the business.

http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php ... 2b0s79p156

http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php ... b0s79p2031

jimcameron

i'm looking for the same thing. i'm going touring on my cyclocross bike and was hoping to get front rack though i don't have any eyelets either. i've found a blackburn rear rack that mounts using the wheels skewer and plastic coated clips for stability. surely theres a front rack version of this design? the rear one is a blackburn ex-1 disc.

Flogger

You could maybe get away with a large handlebar bag

cycladelic

The UK firm Carradice used to offer a front set of panniers called 'limpet' that attached via a metal loop that connected to the wheel spindle. I don't think they make them now, but you could do a search online - you may find some second-hand.

andymiller

Last time I looked on Chain Reaction Cycles site they had racks that simply clamped onto the fork leg. There's also the Tubes Smarti that uses the brake bosses.

yossarian82

Nice one guys appreciate the help! I was looking at the Tubus ones but they seem pretty expensive especially as I am a poor student. How secure are the fork attachments if anyone has experience with them? Tom

AndyOgy

Guys, how have you missed this one?:

http://www.evanscycles.com/products/bla ... 20lowrider

Ticks all the boxes, right?

nwallace

The upper clamps for the FL-1 aren't exactly accomodating of non-standard thickness forks, although they look normal on the surly. And since there's no disc mount certainly won't hit the same problem I had to get round!

andrew_s

The FL1 works fine, so long as you fit the fork clamps correctly.

The drawback is that it was designed when pannier hooks were just hooks, and the plate along the top stops the anti-jump catches on modern pannier hooks from reaching round underneath the top rail. It will probably be necessary to make a couple of holes in it for the catches once you've decided where the hooks should go.

The Tubus Tara plus fork clamps will be better, but it costs a lot more.

mz__jo

I have just fitted a set of the Blackburn front lo-loader racks to an old Vitus-tubed Peugeot which only has mudguard eyes. No real problems, except that the kit was missing 4 nuts that are 1/4UNC (not metric) and so impossible to find/replace in France (in UK this would be less of a problem). The only other issue was changing the line of the front hoop so that it didn't foul on the QR for the front wheel (and swopping around the qr skewers to find the one with the most clearance). It isn't Tubus but the finished job pleases me. I loctited all the fittings to try to avoid trouble, the bike is for lending to a clubmate this summer.

mz__jo

+1 for the comment on the panier hooks, my cheap little paniers have old-fashioned steel hooks that fit with no trouble; the big ones have plastic clips that I will have to replace with hooks to make them usable.

nwallace

I should have said.
The only trouble I've been finding with the R&K hooks on Altura Orkneys is the locking mechanism doesn't always get pushed far enough down to engage, although that's got more to do with my mudguard mounting alterations fouling the hook than the clearance.