i would recommend 2mm, personaly i think 1mm is too thin!
several months ago i made racks for my C B500x, i used 2.2mm, to bend it i modified my normal pipe bender.

made these using 45 year old plus rods, so welds really ugly :(

all EN 316 stainless steel. I don't do flimsy. Rack and throw over guards.

http://www.triumphrat.net/attachment...t-p1020789.jpg

couldn't post two urls ???

http://www.triumphrat.net/attachment...y-p1020791.jpg

I came up with this simple C-rack or 'Ear Rack' idea to help support some throwovers on my Himalayan.
Made from one-inch and only 2-point mounting (actually 2 bolts up top) so may fold in a heavy crash, but I prefer the minimum needed to get the job done. Worked fine out in Morocco with a set of Kriega OS22s.

22mm actually Chris ;-)
Glad they worked out.

just had a read though the thread to get some ideas for a lightweight rear rack and frames for my little super sherpa 250 :thumbup1:

I've made racks for my TTR250, first from 10mm steel bar, and Mk2 from 12mm diameter 2mm wall steel tube. The bar bends quite easily around a former (eg some sawn-off scaffold tube) Tube ideally needs a pipe bender for tight curves but larger radii are possible without. Use 25mm x 3mm flat to make mounting points wherever is convenient on the bike (passenger footpeg brackets, exhaust bolt mounts etc) and find your local friendly agricultural engineer to weld it all together!


My Mk1 on the ttr forum:
https://ttr250.activeboard.com/t60980288/load-carrying/


Mk2 on the left in this pic:

014.jpg


I use Andystrapz throwovers. (Poor man's Magadans but I'm very happy with them!)

I've just finished making a rack + pannier mounts for an old classic bike I'm going travelling on in the summer. Bending tube without some kind of former to stop it collapsing (so DIY level) is almost impossible (in my experience anyway). I made the system in the picture below using a lucky find of an old rack in a junk shop. It didn't fit (not surprisingly), but I cut the bends out and used them with some straight tube to make a rack that did.

The other bends were done by 'cut and shut' - cut a V section (or a number of them) out of the tube, close the gaps up until the bend is correct and weld up the cuts. Crude but effective. It is a lot easier to make stuff for these old bikes as there's plenty of available mounting points, so no having to cut plastic away or anything.

I looked at various tube diameters and wall thicknesses and went for 16mm with 1.5mm wall thickness. 1.00mm wall thickness wasn't really strong enough + it was easy to blow holes in when welding it, whereas 2.00mm seemed like overkill for the amount of luggage I'd be carrying and was very heavy. I used 25 x 4mm flat to make the mounting brackets.

https://i.postimg.cc/PJG0VcWK/DS6-Mar22.jpg