Tubus Cosmo Rack = Expensive Crap for Posers

On 6/5/2011 11:24 AM, SMS wrote:
On 6/3/2011 3:13 PM, Coolmaine wrote:

I cannot recommend the Cosmo. It is a poseur's rack, of little
practical use. The makers charge a huge amount of money for it and
don't even give you all the necessary fitting parts. It would probably
be a good rack if it were bigger, in which case the clumsy angling of
the lower rails might not matter, and if it came with enough fitting
components and spring washers to keep it on the bike. As it is sold, I
am decidedly unimpressed.

"They" or "someone" should make the "perfect rack":

-Stainless Steel or Cro-Mo Steel

-Three support struts.

-Rear light mount _under_ the rack, not sticking out behind it as on the
Bruce Gordon or Thorn Expedition, or Nitto Big Back Rack.

-Separate mounting rail for panniers so a rack top bag can be easily
installed or removed without removing the panniers first.

-Dogleg strut that keeps the pannier from flopping into the rear wheel.
-Level dogleg strut so panniers can be positioned anywhere on the rack
and still have a level place to hook onto.

-Bumps in the dogleg strut or a wavy dogleg strut so pannier hooks don't
slide back and forth.

-36-42 cm long (sometimes shorter is okay, as long as the panniers can
be positioned all the way to the rear and still have something to hook
onto, straight down, on the bottom, i.e. the Surly Nice Rack is 31 cm).

-Minimum width of 12 cm rail to rail.

-Adustable height mounting.

-Highly adjustable seat stay mounting (all three axises can be adjusted,
width, length, angle).

-Comes with long seat stay struts/brackets.

Of course there is no such rack on the market. Today, I would probably
take the chance with aluminum and get the Massload CL-476. Personally
I've only had one aluminum rear rack ever break and it was a cheap
Bor-Yueh rack from Nashbar. I've seen aluminum racks come apart at the
weld where the two or three struts come together down by the dropout,
due to metal fatigue causes by continuous vibration, but if you look at
the Massload CL-476, they seem to have found a good solution to this
problem, as you can see in the photo at
http://gregandsue.com/util/bike/LandRider_Rack-1.jpg where the struts
go into another piece of aluminum with sleeves.

The Rivendell/Nitto "Big Back Rack" looks pretty good, though it misses
a few of the design goals
http://www.rivbike.com/products/show/big-back-rack-nitto/20-022

You would likely need to have it custom-made. At least part of it, anyway.

If you could find a cheaper all-steel rack, much of the hardware could
be salvaged from that which would save a lot of time. Bending and
sticking steel tubing with a torch doesn't take long at all.

On 6/5/2011 11:39 AM, DougC wrote:

Mostly what I remember was the lower bolts repeatedly coming loose until
the threads in the frame hole were stripped, and then that bike had no
more rack since if you got a longer bolt and tried to put a nut on the
backside, the nut would block the chain from being used on the smallest
cog.

It's true that the rack bolts are prone to coming lose and that larger
bolt threads would be less likely to strip after repeated
re-tightenings. The dropout isn't thick enough for many threads, and if
the frame is aluminum then it's even worse. But if you just put a drop
of thread lock on the bolts they won't come loose in the first place.

If you do strip the threads you can remove the wheel and put a low
profile cap head stainless steel bolt (Mcmaster 92095A208) through from
the other side, and use a stainless steel nylon insert lock nut on the
other side. The cap head bolt should not block the chain from going on
the smallest cog. Might be a good idea to do this even if the holes are
not stripped.

The only bike I have now has a rack I made myself. Instead of using the
frame holes for mounting, it has four-bolt clamps that grab the frame
tube. The bolts used are 5/16", which is really only about 8.5mm--but
they are attached with nylon-locking nuts. Despite the lack of
thread-locking compound and many times of carrying 20-30+ lb loads since
1996, none of them have ever come loose even once.

You can buy racks that grab the frame tube. This one
http://www.cl-massload.com.tw/index.php?mo=CProductInfo&ac=product1_show&sn=22&n um=16&ng=1
is sold he
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/bicycle-metal-rear-cargo-rack-56323.

Some racks lend themselves to modification for frame mounting, i.e. on
my mountain bike I mounted the REI 736-890 "Novara Safari" Rack
http://nordicgroup.us/bicycleluggageracks/rackimages/safari.JPG using
U bolts, as shown here
http://nordicgroup.us/bicycleluggageracks/rackimages/marinrackmount.jpg.
Of course most shops could not be bothered to come up with solutions to
bicycles where the manufacturer forgets proper rack mounts.

I doubt I'd pay for any store-bought rack now. They look nicer and weigh
less but are far too flimsy to be useful. They might work if one had to
carry around a lot of packages of styrofoam coffee cups, but they're not
really good for anything much heavier.

In reality, racks rarely break at the dropout mounting holes, or at all.
Poorly manufactured and improperly designed racks break due to poor
welds. There are numerous reports of Blackburn racks breaking at the
welds down by the dropouts, but this may be because so many Blackburn
racks were sold, and so many were used for heavy loads.

You can buy very strong and very high quality steel rear and front
racks, but they won't be cheap, i.e. the Nitto rack for $190,
http://www.rivbike.com/products/show/big-back-rack-nitto/20-022. You
can also buy very strong and very high quality aluminum racks, and some
manufacturers have figured out how to mitigate the weld failure problems
that affected some poorly designed racks.

On 6/5/2011 10:16 AM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per SMS:
to
minimize the number of different diameter bolts,

Can't recall the make/model, but a few years ago the local
Performance Bicycle shop had an FS that could be totally
disassembled/reassembled using only a 5-mil hex key - cranks,
IRRC, and all.

I guess it went the way of too many good ideas, but it sure
appealed to me.

I get crazy when I see 4 and 5mm hex bolts intermixed when 5
would do it across the board.

That's true. While a 3mm or 4mm bolt, perhaps with a wider head, would
be fine for fenders, why complicate things?

On Jun 5, 1:56 am, Coolmaine wrote:
On Jun 4, 5:19 pm, Dan O wrote:

On Jun 3, 3:35 pm, AMuzi wrote:
I would have thought Tubus Cargo for your bike:http://www.vlerickfietsen.be/bagaget.../cargo_big.jpg

That's the one I use - extremely satisfactory.

http://i54.tinypic.com/348slys.jpg

See, while my rack isn't heavily used, it isn't mollycoddled either,
and it is used as a sacrificial item to protect an expensive bike. I
clean the bike, a quick wipe, once a year; I'm not a compulsive waxer.
So the rack will sooner rather than later become rusty if it is
cromoly.

Isn't the bike frame chrome-moly, too?

snip

On 6/5/2011 3:22 PM, Dan O wrote:
On Jun 5, 1:56 am, wrote:
On Jun 4, 5:19 pm, Dan wrote:

On Jun 3, 3:35 pm, wrote:
I would have thought Tubus Cargo for your bike:http://www.vlerickfietsen.be/bagaget.../cargo_big.jpg

That's the one I use - extremely satisfactory.

http://i54.tinypic.com/348slys.jpg

See, while my rack isn't heavily used, it isn't mollycoddled either,
and it is used as a sacrificial item to protect an expensive bike. I
clean the bike, a quick wipe, once a year; I'm not a compulsive waxer.
So the rack will sooner rather than later become rusty if it is
cromoly.

Isn't the bike frame chrome-moly, too?

snip

The likely thought process is that powder-coating on a rack is likely to
get worn off, while powder-coating on the frame will not (barring
accidents).

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.

On 6/5/2011 1:56 PM, Lou Holtman wrote:
Op 5-6-2011 20:43, Tºm Shermªn™ °_° schreef:

The perfect solution is tossing all your stuff behind the seat of your
velomobile.

If I were building practical upright bicycles, I would consider
rotational-molding the equivalent of a rack, bucket panniers [1], and
wheel skirt in one piece.

Bugger off with your velomobile. Stop talking about it and ride the
bloody (green) thing. Geezz.

This brings up one of the biggest advantages of a velomobile - going on
about it annoys the conservative [2] upright cyclist.

Using a car to move stuff from A to B is a perfect solution.

My "ridiculous" pick-up truck is even better at moving things than a
car, e.g. http://www.flickr.com/photos/19704682@N08/5792232576/.

[1]
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_PIJC8dsWqdU/S2DbbTos6qI/AAAAAAAACzg/qymleu8CM98/P7040040.JPG.
[2] Regarding human powered vehicle design, and not necessarily other
areas of life.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.

On Jun 5, 12:31*pm, Tosspot wrote:
On 06/05/2011 12:17 PM, Coolmaine wrote:

On Jun 5, 10:08 am, Tosspot wrote:

snip

http://www.bicyclinglife.com/howto/heavydutyracks.htm:-)

Nice work, Frank. I've saved that article, and the photos separately.
I can get good quality stainless work done locally, except that they
don't do tiny tubes... But bending up bar stock and laser-cutting hole
would be a breeze for these guys. -- Andre Jute

I was quite impressed at how simple it was to fabricate. *You get so
used to ally tubing racks, neatly welded, anodized and all, you forget
the basics, it just has to be able to carry a load. *My only thought
would be how the panniers fit.

Yeah. I just didn't think of having a rack made of flat bar stock,
bolted together, which would solve my problem of not having a bicycle
fabricator in reach because I could use the standard kitchen/bullbar
fabricators down the road. Guess I've just been mixing with these
roadies, weight weenies and engineers with their counter-productive
mass fetish for too long.

If you mean the attachment of the panniers to the rack, if you're
doing the work anyway, or having it done, you just have your own
longish hooked clips bent up to suit the shape of the bar stock, and
for tensioning use either a hook on a shock cord at the bottom or buy
an Ortlieb or Carradice or Altura bottom hook. Since I'll be making my
own leather panniers anyway, to match my large leather saddlebag,
custom hooks don't cause a problem, they just get bolted to the
stiffener inside the pannier (ali sheet or simple stiff plastic sheet,
very light). In fact, the way I use my panniers, even the shopping
basket pannier, they stay on the bike permanently, and there's no
reason not to attach them permanently. I have some briefcase shaped
panniers which are simply attached with tiewraps and left on the bike,
because I never got around to fitting the Ortlieb hardware I ordered.
http://coolmainpress.com/miscimage/K...kbriefcase.jpg I find
that perfectly convenient as I rarely carry loose papers, more likely
books or bottles of wine or sometimes other groceries.

Of course, if I had a rack from which it were more convenient to
remove the panniers than on the !@£$%^& Tubus Cosmo, I might do it
more often...

Andre Jute
The good-sense guy

On Jun 5, 12:51*pm, Nate Nagel wrote:
On 06/05/2011 04:48 AM, Coolmaine wrote:

Why are you such an idiot, Freitos? The only local bicycle shop is
staffed by an 80 year-old blacksmith. He would get the same supply of
parts from Tubus that I do. I can't ask him to buy three whole boxes
of stainless domed nuts at a cost of over sixty Euro, so he can use
one of each on my bike. But you don't ask before you spout off, do
you? You just assume there's a huge, fully provisioned and lavishly
staffed bicycle emporium at the bottom of my block

For bike hardware I keep a stock of nuts, nylocks and washers (as well
as some long socket head cap screws, which I cut to length as needed
when I need one in a pinch) in 5mm and 6mm sizes... *even stainless is
inexpensive fromwww.mcmaster.com(although depending on your locale
shipping might be a bitch)

nate

--
replace "roosters" with "cox" to reply.http://members.cox.net/njnagel

I use RS, which is fast if expensive. But they sell whole boxes of
stuff, which can soon add up to a couple of hundred bucks to get a few
pennies' or dollars' worth of fasteners. One of the local hardware
stores has a very small selection of stainless socket cap screws
though 4/5/6mm goes a long way on a bike. -- AJ

On Jun 5, 5:24*pm, SMS wrote:
On 6/3/2011 3:13 PM, Coolmaine wrote:

I cannot recommend the Cosmo. It is a poseur's rack, of little
practical use. The makers charge a huge amount of money for it and
don't even give you all the necessary fitting parts. It would probably
be a good rack if it were bigger, in which case the clumsy angling of
the lower rails might not matter, and if it came with enough fitting
components and spring washers to keep it on the bike. As it is sold, I
am decidedly unimpressed.

"They" or "someone" should make the "perfect rack":

-Stainless Steel or Cro-Mo Steel

-Three support struts.

-Rear light mount _under_ the rack, not sticking out behind it as on the
Bruce Gordon or Thorn Expedition, or Nitto Big Back Rack.

-Separate mounting rail for panniers so a rack top bag can be easily
installed or removed without removing the panniers first.

-Dogleg strut that keeps the pannier from flopping into the rear wheel.
-Level dogleg strut so panniers can be positioned anywhere on the rack
and still have a level place to hook onto.

-Bumps in the dogleg strut or a wavy dogleg strut so pannier hooks don't
slide back and forth.

-36-42 cm long (sometimes shorter is okay, as long as the panniers can
be positioned all the way to the rear and still have something to hook
onto, straight down, on the bottom, i.e. the Surly Nice Rack is 31 cm).

-Minimum width of 12 cm rail to rail.

-Adustable height mounting.

-Highly adjustable seat stay mounting (all three axises can be adjusted,
width, length, angle).

-Comes with long seat stay struts/brackets.

Of course there is no such rack on the market. Today, I would probably
take the chance with aluminum and get the Massload CL-476. Personally
I've only had one aluminum rear rack ever break and it was a cheap
Bor-Yueh rack from Nashbar. I've seen aluminum racks come apart at the
weld where the two or three struts come together down by the dropout,
due to metal fatigue causes by continuous vibration, but if you look at
the Massload CL-476, they seem to have found a good solution to this
problem, as you can see in the photo at
http://gregandsue.com/util/bike/LandRider_Rack-1.jpg where the struts
go into another piece of aluminum with sleeves.

The Rivendell/Nitto "Big Back Rack" looks pretty good, though it misses
a few of the design goals
http://www.rivbike.com/products/show/big-back-rack-nitto/20-022

I've saved the Nitto/Riv page. The nickel plate sounds like a good
idea. Thanks, Steven. -- AJ

On Jun 5, 6:45*pm, Dan O wrote:
On Jun 5, 1:48 am, Coolmaine wrote:
snip



I want a stainless rack. Do you have any further off the cuff
suggestions?

make one

Tosspot sent a URL to photographs of a guy who did. Looks interesting.