Pannier Bag Guard for Bike Rack

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

I have a Blackburn EX-1 rear rack, and pannier bags that like to curl inward and get caught in my spokes (the rack doesn't have enough structure toward the rear of the bike for them to lay against). I wanted to use a length of 1/2" PVC pipe to act as some kind of a guard in order to prevent this - but the rack has this "crow's foot" pattern that made it a real challenge to attach the pipe in a perpendicular orientation.
After several revisions (most of which worked to some degree, but were too flimsy to last), here is the design I have arrived at. It's two pieces that snap together around the crow's foot pattern, with hoops into which you can slide the pipe.
For each side of your rack, you will need:
-One of these
-A length of 1/2" PVC pipe, approximately 18" in length
-2 small self tapping screws to lock the pipe down
-2 Zip ties
If you really want to avoid using screws for the pipe, you can scale this down to .95 or so, and you can probably achieve a friction fit, but I don't recommend it, as the part will most likely break at the hoops. I added the zip ties for insurance that the parts stay snapped together. I would use a minimum of 60% infill to ensure that the part is rugged enough to withstand daily abuse.