Any Students?

[xeney]

That is good advice -- I have mine mounted even further back, thanks to bad experiences with grocery panniers. See here ... the light is where the rear of the rack is, and the baskets stick way out behind that.

[pll]

And one more silly tip: I have loaded those baskets so much (grocery shopping), I broke the bottom part of the rack, where the rack "stays" are welded and then attach to the frame. One of the people who works at the LBS suggested a hose clamp as a fix. You can see it, albeit not clearly, in the picture I posted, on the right side, in front of the seat stay. It has held together very well. Anyway, you'd think racks should be able to take the weight by design...

The baskets get warped with the weight, but the LBS straightened them the last time I took the bike in for some annual TLC.

[xeney]

What kind of rack do you use? I use the cheap, heavy, $12 Wald rack. I carry a ton of groceries and so far the rack and the baskets are find, but I am totally messing up my rear wheel. I'm going to have to replace it with something that can handle more weight (but I am secretly hoping that my husband gets me a custom wheelset for Christmas).

[pll]

Xeney,

I will double check, but I believe I have a Blackburn rack. Looks like the XR-1 in http://www.blackburndesign.com/racks.html. I paid $36 for it in March 2003 (the receipt does not have the brand or model printed). I have not had a problem with my wheels (not even a flat tire), but the bike is *heavy*.

[xeney]

My bike is a converted single speed with 27" wheels, and the wheels are 22 years old so who knows how they're holding up. But the rear wheel won't stay true anymore and my husband thinks that eventually I am going to pop a spoke.

Basically I need a 27" touring wheel with a flip-flop hub, which I can't buy stock (the one supplier no longer carries them), so I am going to have to have someone build it for me. I keep procrastinating on ordering it because, you know, Christmas. (Which means I'll probably order it the first week in January, heh.)

[pooks]

Thanks for the pics -- I always do better with pictures.

[pll]

Yikes. Sounds pricey. Be careful. Do you tend to load one basket over the other? Since I tend to load the right basket first, I wonder if such a choice has a significant impact on the rear wheel. (but I confess to my bike mechanics ignorance).

[xeney]

No, I always make sure they are pretty even. That wheel just wasn't meant to carry me plus fifty pounds of groceries.

And it's a lot to spend on a $35 garage sale bike, except when I am using the bike for groceries I easily save us $30 a month in gas, so the new wheelset pays for itself pretty quickly.

[pooks]

That's an interesting thought, xeney. Because you're enough shorter than I am and smaller than I am (from seeing your pics) that I may outweigh you by fifty pounds. Is there something about those wheels that makes them less appropriate for larger people? Because even though I'm heavy for my frame, there are many average-sized guys at my weight or more. (Well, let me rephrase that. Maybe I should say tall guys of average weight for their height. My dad was 6'3" and my husband is 6'1" and I think of him as average and my dad as tall. LOL)

[xeney]

I dunno. It's an older, low-end women's road bike with fairly generic alloy rims. I do know that larger guys have to worry about having enough spokes in their wheels ... my "little" brother is 6'2, about 230 pounds, which is big enough that his mountain bike choices were a little limited. (Although he borrowed my mountain bike for a day this summer, and it came back filthy but intact!) When he gets around to buying a road bike he thinks he'll probably buy a touring bike for a number of reasons, one of which is that it will stand up to his size better than a racing-type bike would. Touring bikes tend to have wheels with more spokes, and the spokes are beefier, too.

[pooks]

Well, it sounds like bikes aren't built much for larger-than-average guys, which is kind of interesting, and I'd think somebody would look into that market. Because it's not like a 6'2" foot, 230# guy is all that unusual. Is it? (Again, maybe my pov is skewed because I'm surrounded by tall guys, but I see a LOT of tall guys who aren't my relatives!)

[pll]

The problem with Xeney's 20 year old wheels may also have to do with fatigue failure (I am sure there must a material science engineer around).

Xeney: I had imagined that a custom wheelset would cost more than $100. $35 is a lot more reasonable...

[xeney]

No, no, the bike was $35. The custom wheelset that I want is a lot more than that! But so is a regular old off the shelf wheelset.

[pooks]

I wish I knew enough about bikes to spot a used bargain when I saw one.

Oh wait, then I'd have to know enough about them to actually fix them up.

Damn. Complications abound.

[HipGnosis6]

My heels hit my panniers. It's really annoying, but since they're just soft nylon panniers it's not going to tear up my ankles or cause me to not have an OK pedal stroke. I wish I could adjust the placement of the panniers a little, but alas, they're single piece sling'em-over-the-rack 80's vintage panniers. They were free, so I don't crab about it too much, but I'm still looking for just the right pannier to actually pay for. They're all either a little too small or designed for unsupported touring and therefore gigantic.

When I was in middle school I had one of the earlier hybrids. It had a rack, and I had a bungee with two flat cords. The rack itself had a "trap", a hinged thing that worked great to secure the previously mentioned nylon panniers. But when I needed that extra carrying capacity, I just bungeed a milk crate to the rack. In hindsight I was really glad that bike had a step through frame the way most of the European and Asian everyday bikes do. It worked remarkably well.

Today I frequently use the same panniers and then use a small cargo net to strap my backpack to the rack instead of wearing it. I hate wearing a pack as I ride - it makes my center of gravity seem too high. And I've yet to find a messenger bag that sits comfortably, doesn't twist around and doesn't squash my boobs to all hell....