Rear Rack Difficulties

[kfergos]

I'm having some trouble finding a rear rack for touring that will work with my bike, and I'm looking for suggestions.

Here's the problem:



See where the metal fender thingies meet on the seat stay? That's the lowest boss on the seat stays. This means that any regular rack I choose will sit really high up, possibly just under the saddle, and I'll definitely have to ditch the under-saddle bag. I wouldn't be able to use the top of the rack for carrying anything particularly long or fat, either.

Possible solutions I've seen so far:
- Use a rack that attaches to skewers. For example, the Old Mountain Man Cold Springs. I'm not excited about this option at all because getting the rear wheel on and off would be so much more of a hassle.
- Use a front rack on the back. I'm a little leery of this -- would I be able to carry as much on the rear as I'd like? I haven't seen any front racks that might fit the bill for this. Would it actually work? I'm really not sure.
- Use a rack with adjustable stay mounts. For example, the Axiom Odyssee. How would I be able to tell if this would actually work on my bike or not? Still potential issues with height of rack.
- Use a rack that places the load lower/farther back. For example, the Tubus Cosmo. This might or might not work -- it looks like it might put the load lower down even if the top of the rack was pretty high up, but again, how to be sure before dropping almost $200?

Thoughts? Suggestions? Creative ideas?

(These disc brakes are turning out to be way more trouble than they were worth. Now I'm kind of wishing I'd just built it with regular rim brakes of some sort, but the disc brakes did serve me well in icy Massachusetts winters. I keep reminding myself of that now that they aren't doing me much good.)