Pannier Help!

[OakLeaf]

If my kids had gotten me a rack for mother's day I would move heaven and hell to get a bag and trunk to fit the rack they picked out.

Good point. Sounds like Flybye needs a touring bike to mount that rack on! Really, you don't want to use that pretty carbon bike on commuter roads, potholes, jumping curbs, etc., now do you?

Not true. Old Man Mountain makes racks for any bike, whether they have braze ons or not

I'd still be extremely hesitant to clamp those band clamps to carbon. (I learned the proper term from the Old Man Mountain site ) Besides the wear issues that I mentioned earlier, it occurred to me after I posted that there's a strong possibility of cracking the stays if the clamps are overtightened or if the rack is overloaded, creating a stress on the stay in a direction it wasn't meant to be stressed. Never mind that carbon stays are often not round, which would mean extra stress on the contact points for the clamps, as well as extra places for grit to get in and wear.

There's a very precise (and very low) torque spec for the seatpost clamp on a carbon bike, for instance. Who's going to give you a torque spec for the band clamps? Not the rack manufacturer - who probably couldn't even get the technical data they'd need, and in any case wouldn't be legally smart to take responsibility for a bike manufactured by someone else - and not the bike manufacturer, who will just tell you not to do it.