Front loading weight limits

[Jayme Frye]

In the latest BQ I read with great interest Jan's tour of Japan. The pictures accompanying the article show some seemingly heavily ladened bikes.  I have two low trail 650b bikes (Rawland Stag and Cycles Toussaint Velo Routier) and have used each for short tour/camping trips but have been very conservative with the weight of the gear I carry. I'm curious what is a safe max weight to carry on the front?

Jayme Frye 

[WMdeR]

Jayme,

Assuming you've got properly designed racks, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I've thrown two full-size Berthoud front panniers packed full, a full GB-25 handlebar bag, and strapped my winter sleeping bag and mat on the back on my Alex Singer for a winter camping trip. It handled fine. I've no idea what the total weight was, but it was far more than I've carried on extended summer camping trips (though I habitually pack light). A bike with a mid-fork lowrider rack mount would do even better--the lowrider legs attach at the dropout and the platform of the front rack on my Alex Singer.

Best Regards,

Will

William M. deRosset

Fort Collins, CO

[Jan Heine]

It all depends on the stiffness of your rack. For testing, I once rode my Singer camping bike with 50+ pounds in the front low-riders. It was fine, handling-wise.

On the other hand, 25 pounds on my Mercian with Blackburn lowrider racks had so much rack flex that riding was difficult and dangerous.

How much weight the racks can support long-term is another matter...

Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
2116 Western Ave.
Seattle WA 98121
http://www.bikequarterly.com

Follow our blog at http://janheine.wordpress.com/

At 6:46 AM -0700 7/1/14, Jayme Frye wrote:

In the latest BQ I read with great interest Jan's tour of Japan. The pictures accompanying the article show some seemingly heavily ladened bikes.  I have two low trail 650b bikes (Rawland Stag and Cycles Toussaint Velo Routier) and have used each for short tour/camping trips but have been very conservative with the weight of the gear I carry. I'm curious what is a safe max weight to carry on the front?

Jayme Frye

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[Lee Chae]

Hi Jayme, I'll echo Will. I've put quite a lot of weight (>20 lbs.) on my Kogswell P/R MkII with no problems at all (in fact the handling improved with all that weight):

http://tinyurl.com/qcgbmbg

I've also hoisted a modest load (12-15 lbs) on my Ebisu, which wasn't designed for camping loads:

http://tinyurl.com/qaukot7

Best,

Lee

On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Jayme Frye <jayme...@gmail.com> wrote:

In the latest BQ I read with great interest Jan's tour of Japan. The pictures accompanying the article show some seemingly heavily ladened bikes.  I have two low trail 650b bikes (Rawland Stag and Cycles Toussaint Velo Routier) and have used each for short tour/camping trips but have been very conservative with the weight of the gear I carry. I'm curious what is a safe max weight to carry on the front?

Jayme Frye 

--

[Andrew Fatseas]

I've carried a full camping load on my (low trail) Grand Bois randonneur using a front rack with panniers, handlebar bag and saddle bag. There was no handling penalty as a result of loading up the front panniers with cooking gear and food, as long as the weight was relatively even side to side.  Putting that weight on the rear of the same bike results in horrible handling, frame flex and shimmy most of the time.

Andrew