Farkling with rubber tubing...

[Freeloadeur]

... Or how to make a pannier rack when you can't weld and don't have a tube bender.

Worried that my new panniers would melt onto my exhaust I decided to make up done support to hold the exhaust side away and balance up the look of the bike. But, as I'm hose-sitting in France I didn't don't have much in the way of tools and anyway I don't have much in the way of metalworking skill. So this is how I did it.

First I got hold of some 8mm stainless threaded rod, and some 10mm internal diameter fuel hose.

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The bits, total cost £4.75, tool kit not included[/center]

The rod slides inside the hose fairly easily, a bit of washing-up liquid helps ease things along. Then, the point of no return, the first bend. A lack of pipe-bender meant I ended up clamping everything in an old vice, hardly nice radiused curves, but I figured the fuel hose helped a bit.

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high tech it wasn't
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A few more bends, a bit of head scratching and lots of offering up to the bike and I ended up with this.

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Ready to attach
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Having screwed a Nyloc nut onto each end, I simply took out the two 8mm bolts holding the exhaust and indicator on, the reason I choose 8mm rod, and replaced them with the new pannier supports.

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One down[/center]

The other side annoyingly had nothing to bolt onto, but a look under the plastic revealed a support welded onto the frame with bolt holes ready and waiting, luckily a rummage around my parents'garage revealed a shelf bracket. Unluckily the holes were 6mm and I only had a hand-drill.

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Twenty sweaty minutes later[/center]

A bit of tweaking to get everything to line up and my panniers are now secure, and cool.

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Looking almost powder coated steel[/center]

The whole thing took about forty-five minutes, and about £5, so I'm quite pleased with how good they look.

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Panniers well supported and fastened on, and hopefully cooled[/center]

Now, wouldn't a tool tube look good in that great big space on the nearside.

[Paul-S]

Great job

[phil90]

Good stuff.

[Wilso122]

nice!

Sent from my GT-S5830 using Tapatalk 2

[PHILinFRANCE]

£4.75 for racks :woohoo: great job mate

[mrdelmonti]

Brilliant idea, mind if I steal it for myself? :whistle:

[Morph]

Excellent job, nice one.

[Phil]

Brilliant idea, mind if I steal it for myself? :whistle:

yeah i was thinking that too, ive got loads of threaded bar at work.

Good job fella, your whole pannier set up is a bargain! :woohoo:

[boatman]

well done very inventive
I am having a policy change my self to a lower cost model of biking , bought an older wee honda transalp (mibbies do away with my uber expensive bmw 1200 gas see how it goes) managed to find an unmolested wee bike so the farkling begins this week
E bay panniers to go onto a rack that i am going to recyle onto the bikie from an old steel frame from a sun lounger !!!!! i will try some pics when i get it done !

[devon john]

i am about to make a rack and pannier frames for my bike.

i have printed the fixing instructions off the toratech catalogue as a start then modify
to suit my needs but i do weld!!!!!!


john