Rear rack on Steel Fierte

[cosolin]

My wife just got a new 2006 Serotta Fierte (Steel frame with carbon wishbone seatstays). We don't generally tour, but we have an opportunity to do a little light touring and would like to see if there's a way to put a rear rack on the bike for panniers.

I see two options:
1. Seatpost clamp rack. This will require replacing the nice carbon seatpost with an aluminum one and will limit the load to about 20 pounds. Could work.
2. Old Man Mountain makes racks for bikes that have no eyelets. They replace your skewer with a longer one and attach the rack at the axle. http://www.oldmanmountain.com/rear_rack_page.htm. These have a higher weight capacity but would need to also clamp on the seat stays. This bike has a carbon wishbone seat stay setup and I'm nervous about clamping something around the carbon material. Because of the wishbone design, the clamps would sit low, below the brakes, and I'm thinking might exert too much force on the stays.

So, has anyone tried to do this? Are we crazy? I know this is not the bike for this, but if we can make it work it would be a great bike for some light touring. It's super comfortable for long rides and has a compact drive train so we can chug up a few steep hills even without a triple.

Thanks for any input.

Christopher

[victoryfactory]

Christopher;

I've used the seatpost type racks, they work pretty well with a small
bag on them, but provide limited capacity.
The rack supported by special skewers looks like a brilliant idea, but do
you really need to clamp anything to your seat stays? can't you just attach
at the brake bolt with one of those bracket do-hickys?

VF

[cosolin]

Thanks Victoryfactory for your reply. I'm strongly considering the seatpost mounted rack and it's good to hear you've had a positive experience with them. It's the small capacity I'm worried about.

As for the other rack attaching at the brake bolt with a do-hicky, I haven't seen the do-hicky that would allow me to attach it there. All the clamps I've seen attach to the seat stays.

Another idea I had was to get a custom band clamp with a long threaded rod to attach to the top of the wishbone stay. This part of the stay design is steel and I'd feel a whole lot more comfortable clamping something to steel. It's up higher, so very little load would be transferred to it. Problem here is I need it for this weekend. Time is not on my side, but maybe for the next trip after this one I'll have it all figured out.

Go here to see a sketch of my idea:
http://web.mac.com/cosolin/iWeb/Personal/Blog/Blog.html

Christopher

[christian]

Carradice Nelson bag. If you pay postage both ways, you can borrow mine. You'll need a Carradice seatclamp or a Bagman as well. I have those too.

Nelson (longflap): http://www.wallbike.com/carradice/longflaps.html
Bagman rack: http://www.wallbike.com/racks/bagman.html

I've used this combo for a 10 day tour of the Dolomites/Alps.

- Christian