The Ti bar loop rack thing

I never came up with a good name for this rack, or support system, so comment with your best and if i deem it’s a winner you’ll get a rack. But here’s the ‘why’ of it: After a bike tour on the green OGATB where I buzzed the bottom of the bar bag and ripped a small hole. It was my bad for not using some platform rack or at the least those support arms to block it from happening, but it seemed fine in the shop.

While riding i tend to think about a lot of bike part improvements but this one stuck in my head so when i got back to the shop i made a rough prototype. I wanted it to fit on mountain or drop-bars and i wanted to keep the bar bag away from the cable housing and tire. I also wanted it to be adjustable up and down so you could fit it on a variety of different sized frames with more and less space between the top of the tire and the bars. Once i made the first loop i noticed i could make room for two water bottles which makes it even better since with a full framebag you’d have to place the bottles on your fork legs and i don’t like reaching down there while riding. In my experience it makes the bike handle a little wonky and without straps i tend to launch bottles on rough roads. Lastly, I wanted the rack to be light and easily removable, and if you crashed it wouldn’t break.

The first version above was all Titanium and designed for the 22.2 Ti bars on my MTB. The bar clamps were 1/4″ Ti plate that i hope to never manually machine again. It is SOLID and doesn’t swivel but the loop doesn’t telescope up and down like i wanted. So a plan for version 2 was hatched.

Version 2 had aluminum clamps for a 31.8 bar, the loop had a steeper 90 deg bend, and the Ti rails telescoped up and down like a trombone so you could adjust height above the tire. I figured i’d sell a couple of lengths, or just offer custom lengths, so there wouldn’t be much tube sticking up above the bars. But then i realized that could be a benefit – be used for another mount above the bars for a light and phone mount. Too much work but I made one just to try it out.

For bottle cages, I used two of the King side-loaders to make the bottles face back towards the rider, although i could adjust the boss angles on the Ti loop so normal cages would work better, i liked how the Sideloaders created a flat platorm for a bag to sit against, as seen with the orange Roadrunner bag in the photo below. I was even able to bolt the plastic backing in the bag to the middle sideloader cage mounts to secure it together better. The Roadrunner bag has horizontal beams to help keep the bag shape when not fully loaded and i could thread the Ti loop underneath them to really secure the bag to the rack.

I rode this version on the OGATB and loved it. I felt I had a proof of concept and asked a friend to draw up the clamps in CAD to see if they’d get lighter with more chamfered edges and milled out areas. I made a shorter Ti loop for the Outershell bag just to try it out and I liked how it kept the bag level and out front and not sitting against the cable housing. The new bar clamps got me thinking about using all possible space, so i ordered a Control Deck from Drj0n Bagworks and tapped some holes in the top of the clamps. This had the added benefit of keeping them phased and together so you could more easily install the clamps and loop while gaining the ability to mount my phone and a light.

The new clamps were nice, anodized black but needed some more milling and streamlining to be perfect. I also reached out to a bag maker to design a custom bag for the rack but that didn’t materialize either. I think it was around Covid times and it just didn’t happen so I let this project go. I wasn’t sure how to properly test it since i’m not an engineer. Clamping to carbon bars always stressed me out – what torque should I recommend and is that safe over the long term? This was beyond my comfort level. So i just use them on my own bikes and enjoy the benefits i think they provide.