Oh, look, another chore
When I fire up the torch next week to build and reinforce racks (build a new rack for Bill Alsup; add some crosswise deckpieces to the porteur rack on the project bike; build a new rack for Russell’s P/R) I’m also going to have to do a little repair work to the rack on the mlcm because the fork crown mount has snapped in half and the rack is being held in place by the left side of the mount only.
It was never the best sort of mount – since it’s a crosswise-mounted piece of strap metal, it gets a lot of flex from the rack trying to vibrate back and forth (to the tune of maybe 11,000 miles since I put it onto the bicycle) when a more conventionally mounting strap would get twisted instead. The one big thing it has going for it is that it gets the rack lower than a conventional mount would get it, but I may have to abandon that feature when I repair it (I’m going to use some 5/16ths×0.028 stainless tubing as a lug to fit over the frame tubing where the mount used to be, then machine a slot and braze in a downwards-facing mounting bracket to replace it.
One day until summer vacation begins!