Quote:
Originally Posted by mossproof
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
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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.
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