Getting the Bike Ready - Rack

Bikepacking or touring is generally a multi-day undertaking. So you're going to need to carry all sorts of things with you. Clothes, spares and probably camping equipment.

You have many choices when it comes to carrying all that gear (and I'll share my experience on this topic more generally in a later post) but it's very likely that like me, you'll conclude you want to use panniers. Assuming that's the case, you'll need to add a rack to your bike so you can mount the panniers.

I'd ridden with panniers before and liked them. Using a rucksack occurred to me as a possible alternative, but was quickly discounted. A rucksack will make your back very, very sweaty and become uncomfortable quickly. Your centre of gravity will also be quite high and that's not likely to make the bike easy to handle. A set of panniers on the other hand, suffers from none of these problems.

I did lots of reading on the subject and found that the key criteria for selecting a rack include these issues:

1. How much does the rack weight?
2. How much weight does the manufacturer say it can handle safely?
3. How stiff is the rack?
4. What warranty does the manufacturer offer?
5. How easy will it be to mount your panniers?
6. Can it be mounted on a bike which has disk brakes?

My choice was the Tortec Epic Alloy Rear Rack which can handle 25kg in weight but made from alloy, is itself relatively light. It's design also lets you mount panniers high or on a lower level, which I prefer as it keeps your centre of gravity low and leaves the higher bars for other purposes.

The Tortec Epic Alloy bike rack

Fitting the Tortec was really easy. All I had to do was remove the screws which my bike's frame already had in its mount points, and then use them to afix the rack, following the manufacturer's instructions.

One of several screws already in the frame's rack mount points

Voila! Bike rack mounted!