Rack Building.....

A few pictures of the racks I recently built up for my townine. I used all stainless steel, to see how they hold up in this climate without paint.

I TIG welded all of the front rack (a Porteur Style Rack) , and TIG welded and silver brazed the rear rack (a extra long rear rack to hold panniers and u-locks). On the rear rack, I choose to TIG weld the most significant load bearing joints and silver braze the others.

As expected the TIG welding took a lot of time, primarily because it was very difficult to position the TIG torch on some of the inner joints, and I had to approach the joint from many angles, while also figuring out a way to hold the rack in that position.

Basically - without buying a micro TIG torch setup - I couldn't figure out any way to TIG weld the close joints on the rear rack. Silver brazing some of the less structurally significant joints on the rear rack speed things up significantly. It will be good to see how well the racks hold up to heavy use / hauling.

I still need to add the half circle type tie downs that I have on the rear rack to the front rack. I also recently procured some 22mm stainless steel tubing to allow me to add handle bar style bike light mounts on the vertical risers on the front rack - which will allow the lights to be mounted low to better see the road ahead.

I am thinking about having some of the smaller parts laser cut or CNC machined to make the job easier and less tedious.

I also need to making up some jigs / fixtures to hold the rack in position on the bike during the build - that will make things easier to measure and fabricate.