Tubus Tara Front Touring Rack
My front touring rack on a fixed fork bike was an el cheapo special made of aluminium that had to be modified to fit and flexed when I loaded full panniers onto it, so I brought a Tubus Tara front rack to replace it.
The old rack as shown in the photograph was made of thin aluminium and the Ortleib panniers didn''t fit onto it too well and rattled around. I was wanting a front rack to hang the Ortlieb panniers onto my new tourer.
Living in one of the most remote capital cities in the world, it was rather hard trying to locate a rack for a real touring lugged front fork. I was able to locate the rack shown in the above photograph at a cheap price. However it had some short comings. The first problem for me anyway was that it was not made of steel, but aluminium. I have an utter distrust of anything on a touring bike not made of steel.
The next problem was when I went to mount it to the fork. When the rack was attached, the mounting hole for the rack to attach to the fork was not even close. I had to drill a hole into the top plate of the rack. The next issue I had was that the Ortlieb panniers did not mount to this rack because they use a locking mechanism and this rack had a plate across the top. I had to drill two more holes and file them out to make some space for the locking attachments.
Finally after all this, I found that the Orlieb panniers are designed to mount to thicker tubing so they rattled around on this rack. The final problem was loading the panniers. With loaded panniers on this rack it flexed to the point where it was hard to tell whether it was going to hit the spokes or the top hoop was going to hit the tyre.
So I went looking for a new rack. After numerous attempts to locate a rack, I managed to place an order for a Surly Nice Front rack. I was told the Tubus was unavailable in Australia. After placing three different orders for Surly racks, they never arrived. Six months after first ordering one, I finally located a shop in Melbourne who had a Tubus Tara front lowrider rack in stock. These are made of steel as well, so I ordered it.
A day later and the rack was here. The first thing I did after taking delivery of it was to jettison the old rack and mount the Tubus Tara. It is extremely light weight, and came with all the mounting hardware to mount it to a lugged fork. It mounts to the rear eyelet. The front eyelet is not required so this is good news for people without that extra touring lug on the front. There is a small lug on the rack to use as a mounting point for your mudguards as well.
New Tubus Tara Rack in place.
The rack also came with the hook mounting points underneath the rack. The mounting points can be bolted to the rack if you have panniers with a hook at the bottom. It also came with some stick on protection material to protect the rack. The Ortlieb pannier''s top locking mounts fit this rack beautifully. I did find that the tubing was a little bit thick for the lower Ortlieb mounting, but because the pannier''s lower mounting is adjustable, this was easy to get around.
I can now safely tour without fear of my panniers going their own way with a cheap rack, and without the rattling noise disturbing my sleep when riding.
