F&R racks on new Club Tour slight quibbles

[JohnMurray]

These are minor but daily annoyances on tour.

As supplied, my front rack is Thorn, my rear rack is the narrow Tubus, whatever it's called (Vega Evo?)

The front Thorn rack is excellent - solid as a rock but not heavy. BUT despite it being so large, there is actually very little area where I can put on my pannier clips, mainly due to the diagonal bar fouling the cam-closing Arkle clip. I've had to move the clips in to the point that the clip-clip distance is only about a third of the pannier width. So while the rack is solid as a rock, my front panniers aren't.

Secondly, the lowest horizontal bar, where I hook the pannier's elastic stabiliser, is a convex curve. This means that the hook isn't very secure - it can slide off.

The rear Tubus rack isn't Thorn's problem, but they did sell it to me. While it does have a narrow slot near the bottom of each side, this slot is too small and the wrong shape to fit the hook on the pannier's elastic stabiliser. There is nowhere else to put the hook. I tried jamming it up the open bottom of a tube, but it didn't really fit and the tube was damaged.

So I don't use the stabiliser, which makes for bouncing pannier syndrome on rough roads. Yes, I will cobble together a Heath-Robertson fix for this. It's just gobsmacking that Tubus' design is so poor.

Other than this it's an excellent rack, and the narrowness is not a problem for carrying a tent, which wedges nicely between the panniers.

[John Saxby]

John,

Not sure if you'd want to replace one or both of your racks, but this is what I use on my Raven, which is fitted with Arkel panniers:

     > front rack is Arkel's own low-rider rack:  https://www.arkel-od.com/en/ac-lowrider.html  Oooops! seems it's out of stock, being redesigned to accept disc brakes. I've used this for four seasons now, and have found it to be excellent -- lots of space for the Arkel cam fastener.

     > rear rack is a Topeak:  https://www.topeak.com/global/en/products/mtb-&-700c-touring-racks/914-uni-super-tourist-dx-(non-disc)  This has a separate bar on which the rear panniers are mounted, so that there's no interference between panniers and tent, or whatever is on top of the rack. If you want to push your panniers all the way back, the rear cam-lock will also lock against the rear vertical strut of the rack.

Both of these items are alloy, so may not be up to the demands of, say, a long tour across tough terrain with a heavy load.  On the other hand, I don't do such tours, so these work well for me.  I have a second Topeak which I use on my derailleur bike, and it's given me no problems in 15 years of use.

Cheers,  John

[Danneaux]

Tubus and Ortlieb are designed to work with each other, so best results will be obtained by matching the two.

Best,

Dan.

[julk]

I have converted my Carradice Super C panniers to Arkle Cam Hooks.

I find the Thorn rear rack works fine with Arkel Cam Hooks, but I also found the Thorn front rack difficult to fit them on.

I migrated to a Tubus Duo and the hooks work just fine with a bit of rubber tubing on the rack where the hooks hang as that tube is thinner than the main part.

[martinf]

Tubus and Ortlieb are designed to work with each other, so best results will be obtained by matching the two.

I reckon Thorn racks are also designed for Ortlieb bags. I have the combination of Thorn rear rack and Thorn low-loader front rack on two bikes, these racks work very well with the Ortlieb front and rear pannier bags I have.

[RonS]

Hi, John, and welcome to the forum!

Sorry to hear of your troubles. I'm sure you will get lots of help from the members here. It's the best forum on the net. No fights, just friends.

I have Arkel panniers. I think they're great. As a Canadian, I want everyone else to think so too. :-)
I'm no engineer, but I think that having the cam hooks only using 1/3 of the rail should be OK. They're strong hooks. As for the bottom hook sliding off the convex bottom rail, how about making a "notch" using some epoxy putty on the bottom of the lower rail? That should keep the hook from sliding to the side.

I have a Cargo Evo rear rack. I think it has the same oblong hole for putting the pannier hook in as the Vega Evo. I have no problem putting my lower hook into the hole. Maybe yours is different. Perhaps a picture would help us help you. Would bending the hook help? Or tying a different hook to the bungee cord?

Best of luck

Ron

[mickeg]

Not sure if this will help or not, but several years ago I had a rack that had no place where I could put the lower hook on my shopping panniers.  I made a loop out of metal and attached that to the rack with a small clamp.  Some people call them P clamps or P clips, but I think their official name is a cable clamp if you ask for one at a hardware store.  Worked great until I finally bought a better rack.

On one of my bikes I lack a place to put the lower pannier hook, thus instead of using a short bolt to mount my rack to the rear dropout, I used a much longer bolt and use a nut to hold the rack firmly to the dropout.  Thus, there is may 6 or 7 mm of excess threaded portion of the bolt showing where I can hook my pannier hook on that threaded portion of the bolt.
 
Can't help on the front.

[Danneaux]

My first Thorn purchase was the Low-Loader MkV, which I installed on one of my touring-rando bikes. It worked so well, it confirmed my idea to purchase a whole bike of similar quality to go with it.

At the time (my pre-Ortlieb days), I was running several different front panniers...a couple sets I made myself and sometimes --depending on the bike's trail geometry -- a set of Kirtland TourPak S/T *rear* panniers on the Thorn Low-Loader MkVs (the relatively low trail of the bike encouraged front-heavy loading).

All the bags used stainless steel hooks at the top, stainless springs for tension, and a stainless "S" hook at the bottom.

To locate the lower S-hook, I placed a couple pairs of heavy-duty cable ("zip") ties about 1cm apart in the middle of the lower run of the Thorn rack. Problem solved! The cable ties never shifted in over 19,000km and the lower pannier tension S-hook remained secure. Simple, easy and very reliable, they served well. Photos below, taken before I sold the bike as a frameset, transferring the components and accessories to my other bikes.

The same front rack eventually moved to my Sherpa and now lives on my Nomad. I still like it very much and it remains my favorite over two Tubus Taras and a Duo that live on several of my other bikes.

Best,

Dan.