Racks are an awesome addition to a bike. If you`ll be hauling more weight than you could comfortably get into a back pack or if you just want to keep your shirt dry having a cargo rack to carry your stuff is a great solution. Once you have a rack installed there is a whole world of cool pannier bags to carry stuff in AND you can use the Fairdale Skaterack.
Being able to haul more with your bike opens up a world of opportunities.
Possible jobs you could get once you have a rack:
-Hauling cow skulls for Danzig!
-Delivering Time trial aero helmets in an unhurried manner.
-Hauling lazy people (up to 55lbs) to get ice cream.
-Delivering Etnies shoes.
-Delivering goldfish to goldfish eating contests.
-Delivering hundreds of finger bikes.
-Whatever else is up to 55lbs that will fit.
Here are some hints for installing the Fairdale cargo rack:
First things first… We had a minor screw up with our racks and they don’t fit the Weekender straight out of the box. The strut leg of our Cargo Rack won’t quite line up with the rack eyelet on the Weekender dropout. If mounted directly against the frame eyelet on the Weekender (no spacer or fender strut to act as a spacer) the front end of the two lower struts will need some modification. Hopefully this isn’t too annoying since installing racks means you need to do a little cutting anyway.
If fitting the rack to a Weekender use a metal file to file away a couple or so millimeter`s off the front edge of the lower strut. If you make the leading edge a little rounder it will clear the “hood” of the dropout, allowing the rack angle to be correct and secure.
The Fairdale Flyer, Coaster and Parser do not need the lower strut modding, following the supplied directions that come with rack are all you`ll need (hopefully).
I like to use medium strength blue threadlock as well on all the hardware. This helps keep your allen bolts from loosening from road vibration and the dude with the sick bass vibrating the earth in his mini truck blasting KID ROCK.
Once the rack is mounted at the bottom you can loosely attach it to the rack mounts on the seat stays.
Adjust the rack so that the top of it sits level and you will likely see that you need to trim the upper struts. We make them extra long so that they will fit a wide variety of bikes. Make a mark with a marker where you want to cut them and then remove them for easy hacksawing.
Chop them nice and even and maybe even file any sharp edges off. You can easily reapply the little rubber cover to the end of the strut.
Tighten everything up and there you go!
Make a sure that your bolts aren’t sticking out too far and into anything important. I used a little lock nut from an old presta tube to space things appropriately.
Now you are ready to put on some bags or strap on some cargo.
Here’s me taking my flat bike for a ride using the rack. Enjoy!
-Leif
