Lowrider racks on MIT Atlantis?

[Brett Callahan]

Curious as to what lowriders people are using on Atlantii. Bonus points for pix.

Brett in pdx

[Bill Lindsay]

Nitto Mt Campee F20 is on my MIT 650b Atlantis.

[Bill Lindsay]

[dougP]

I use the Tubus Duo because it installs so easily.  I take mine off when not using & it's easy to do and the Duo takes up little room.  It's easy to ship the bike with the Duo.  This is on a Toyo Atlantis but I don't see any difference for other Atlantis.

dougP

[Takashi]

Nitto and Blue Lug are developing new lowrider racks.

Their Instagram post says that new racks will be announced soon.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBDVw4oDCW8/

Takashi

[Ryan Nute]

Doug, how does it attach to the fork blades?  I thought Atlantii didn't have lowrider mounts.

Ryan

[dougP]

Ryan:

A friend of mine who's handy with a torch attached them, & also the upper ones for a small Nitto front rack.  Mine is an '03 & the fork had no mounts when I got it.

doug

[Bill Schairer]

I have Bruce Gordon lowrider on my Atlantis.  I don’t believe it is MIT.  Aren’t the attachment points about the same, I don’t know?

Bill S

On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 7:25:33 PM UTC-7, Brett Callahan wrote:

[Joe Bernard]

Yes, all forks from Riv with the so-called low-rider mount at mid-fork are designed to work with racks like the Nitto Mark's. Nitto/Riv also did a Hub Area Rack for it, and lots of people have made traditional low-rider racks fit.

[Dave Johnston]

There are versions of the MIT Atlantis that have both Mark's rack braze-ons and Low rider braze-ons.
Probably can't go wrong with a Tubus Tara.

I can double check to see if a Tubus Duo or Grand expedition will work sometime this weekend. I have a 53cm still in the box.

Pic from Rivendell website:

[Ed Fausto]

Here is their blog on the new S rack.

https://bluelug.com/blog/global/s-rack/

Ed Fausto

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[Kainalu V. -Brooklyn NY]

That's a great looking rack, but then there's this quote that made me wince-

"This rack sold individually. So I installed only right side, for my daily bike.

Maximum load capacity is 6kg (around 13 pounds) I could carry 28 Japanese comics!"

Doesn't make it any less of a rack, I just think it's a little irresponsible to sell lowriders one at a time with balance being so critical to safe and comfortable steering. Presumably this is an expensive rack, what with all the points of brazing and complicated bends, but one should buy two.

-Kai

[Bill Lindsay]

The product page lists the price as $108.77 per side:

https://global.bluelug.com/nitto-s-rack.html

Both sides are in stock.  If I bought one I'd buy both sides.  I wouldn't be scared to run an errand with only one side installed.  I use a plastic Salsa Anything Rack for Growler runs, and so I've ridden my bike a fair bit with ~3kg on one fork leg, including a short length of single track switchbacks.  An unbalanced front end doesn't ride better, and I can notice it, but it's not a problem.  If I lose control of my bike and crash on a growler run, it'll probably be because it's my second growler run.  ;)

Bill Lindsay

Sometimes Arnold CA

[John Hawrylak]

Nice looking rack, but I think Bruce Gordon said "Hopeless is helpless".  RBW even offers their low rider racks with a bolt on hoop.

John Hawrylak

Woodstown NJ

On Saturday, June 13, 2020 at 9:13:00 AM UTC-4, ed wrote:

Here is their blog on the new S rack.

https://bluelug.com/blog/global/s-rack/

Ed Fausto

On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 9:05 PM Dave Johnston <jdi...@gmail.com> wrote:

There are versions of the MIT Atlantis that have both Mark's rack braze-ons and Low rider braze-ons.
Probably can't go wrong with a Tubus Tara.

I can double check to see if a Tubus Duo or Grand expedition will work sometime this weekend. I have a 53cm still in the box.

Pic from Rivendell website:

On Saturday, June 6, 2020 at 1:22:39 PM UTC-4, Ryan Nute wrote:

Doug, how does it attach to the fork blades?  I thought Atlantii didn't have lowrider mounts.

Ryan

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[Dave Johnston]

First up is a Tubus Duo. This is the rack I plan to use, probably combined with a Mark's rack to the upper attachment point.

All pictures are on a 2018 MIT 53cm Atlantis. Depending on tolerances or running changes other bikes may have the mount points in slightly different places. Also Tubus makes running changes as well, but this Duo looks like the current model.

The Duo fits very well but required bending the upper mount point upwards about two mm. Resulting slope of upper rail is about 4.5° back towards rider.

[Dave Johnston]

Next up is an older model Tubus Tara. The very latest model has two lower mounting points and a slot up top instead of 3 holes, but dealers may have old stock with a slot up top and only one hole at the dropout. The Tara fits well, but if you have fat tires (50mm shown) you might want the Big Apple version. Slope is about 3° back towards rider.

[Brett Callahan]

As always this forum is a wealth of information. I looked locally for Tubus and failed to find it, then strongly considered the Blue Lug racks, u til I saw shipping costs, then found that Riv has the hub area rack in stock. That's what I've ordered. Appreciate everyone's help and input!
Cheers,
brett

[Dave Johnston]

Here is my last experiment the new Tubus Grand Expedition front. While it can be physically mounted to the low rider braze-on it doesn't really work.  You would really want to mount the rack lower and use a P-clamp around the fork legs or the Tubus LM-1 clamp on mount. I plan on using this rack on a Clem H with the LM-1 clamp. It also has a diving board type mount from the top platform to the fork crown.

[Joe Bernard]

Is that lower-rear mount on the fork really for low rider racks? It looks like a high-mount for fender stays to me.

[John Hawrylak]

I thought the 'standard' mounting point on the fork was 165mm from the fork dropout.   Bruce Gordon used 7" (178mm) for his front rack, and Waterford used his spacing in the late 90's and early 2000's.

The RBW braze-ons look too high to fit the racks without odd looking backward tilt.  They should have used 2 braze-ons:  1 for the low rider and 1 for the front rack (mounted higher),  penny-wise, pound foolish

John Hawrylak

Woodstown NJ

[dougP]

Dave's problem looks to be solved.  I do want to throw in a couple of things about Tubus racks:

1.  The quoted 165 mm fork tip to mid-fork is what Tubus uses.  It is a commonly used dimension but hardly universal.  Case in point being Bruce Gordon racks. The mid fork mount MUST be correctly located for the Duo to sit level.  While the Duo has 3 mounting holes, the adjustment is limited.

2. An advantage of the Tara is it can be used with a bolt on mid fork mount.  No eyelet needed.

3.  "Hoopless is hopeless" is a myth, despite being Bruce's stand on the question.  The main tube on the Duo is a much larger diameter, and hence inherently stiffer, than the tubing on the Tara, which has the hoop.  They actually weigh about the same.  The Duo is stiff enough without the hoop.  I've used it with Ortlieb large back rollers, stuffed full for a lodging trip.  The panniers are intended for rear mount & so have limited ground clearance.  OK on pavement; not good on trails.

dougP, (hopelessly hoopless)

On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 7:25:33 PM UTC-7, Brett Callahan wrote:

[Bill Schairer]

My solution with the BG rack was to “fabricate” (cut a couple short pieces of steel flat stock and drilled two holes) a short steel connector piece from the rack mounting point to the braze on.  I’ve done it on two different bikes and it has been a rock solid solution that I, personally, think is cleaner looking than p-clamps or that tubus thing. I should think the same approach could be taken with almost any rack and, to my mind, is really no different than all the various mountings of racks with adjustable stays that I’ve seen.  I’ve had trouble loading pics recently but I’ll try again.

Bill S

[John Hawrylak]

Bill

Looks like a great solution and it would seem to work if the fork brazeons were below the rack mounting point, e.g., a BG rack on a fork with 165mm brazeon spacing.

Is the 1st picture the MIT Atlantis??  If so, it clearly shows the braze-ons mounted higher on the fork than most racks require. 

Did you have to use a spacer on the backside so the short connector clears the tube of the rack??

What gauge steel sheet did you use??

John Hawrylak

Woodstown NJ

[Bill Schairer]

John,

The steel used is 1/2 inch by .14 inch because that is what I had on hand.  I suspect a lighter solution would work, aluminum maybe? I believe my Atlantis is a Waterford bike.  No spacers were required for either bike.  I don’t think it matters if braze-ons are above or below.  On the Atlantis they are higher than the rack and on the tandem below.  The tandem braze-on spacing appears very close to 165 and the Atlantis seems to be 220.  The rack appears to be in the 190 range.

Bill S

[Steven Sweedler]

I’ve adapted the BG lowriders to several different forks, I usually use pieces of rack struts, my lbs always seems to have far more of these than they want, and they are very handy for this sort of thing. Steve

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Steven Sweedler
Plymouth, New Hampshire

[John Hawrylak]

Steve

Can you provide a picture of the strutted mounting???  It seems the struts would be very short.  Or do you mount the strut to the rack like the strut to Mark's rack with a drawbolt ??

John Hawrylak

Woodstown NJ

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[Steven Sweedler]

John, here is the lowrider with the struts attached that I used on my Troll

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[John Hawrylak]

Steve

Ohhh, I see, I was thinking of the round struts.  You used flat ones.    Yes, they would be thinner than 1/8" plate.

John Hawrylak

Woodstown NJ

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[Andrew Letton]

On the topic of hoopless:

I bought the first generation (hoopless) Rivendell/Nitto Hub Area Rack (HAR) and installed it on my Bombadil right before we moved to the southern hemisphere (NZ then Oz). I also have the Platrack on a Nitto Mini-Front 32F above it. I was concerned about the strength/stiffness of a hoopless lowrider, but I thought that struts from the outer edges of the Platrack down to the top corners of the HAR would offer enough lateral support.

I was wrong. 

After only about 10 days of touring, one of the fork end bosses where the right HAR was mounted broke off!

<Donning Engineering Hat>  When a hoopless lowrider is mounted at only two points (fork end and mid-fork), those two points define an axis around which the rack can rotate, putting some pretty severe torsional loads on the bosses. (I discussed this with Grant and Mark during the development of the HAR, and I think that is in part what led to the second gen hooped version.) It is not the stiffness of the rack itself that it the issue; it is the fact that without the third mounting support of a hoop, the side-to-side wobbling of loaded panniers puts high stresses on the two mounting points on the fork.

The only way I will ever use a hoopless lowrider again will be if it uses a through-the-fork upper mount with rack struts going to both the inner and outer sides of the fork blade, like the Nitto rack on the Crust shown on the Blue-Lug site and like the rare (late 80's?) Blackburn hoopless lowriders.

As for my Bombadil (photo attached), I haven't yet had the fork boss repaired, but I was able to kluge up a fork end mount with a P-clamp and I added a hoop (from an old Blackburn lowrider) using a couple more small P-clamps. Not elegant, but it works.

Cheers,

Andrew 

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[John Hawrylak]

Andrew

Your experience and engineering explanation backs up what Bruce Gordon said.  He was referring to the hoop disturbing the rotational stresses.

John Hawrylak

Woodstown NJ

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