Tailfin Ultra-Light Rack (Kickstarter)

[GovernorSilver]

Looks like an attempt to solve a couple of problems people have with putting racks on road bikes, especially racier ones. Namely, the weight of a typical rack, and the “fish-tail” effect that some report.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tailfin/tailfin-ultra-light-carbon-bike-rack-and-panniers?ref=nav_search

[mstone]

This is presumably important if you’re trying to carry something bulky and light, such as a bag of air or a few balloon animals.

[dkel]

I’m sorry, but utilitarian and weight weenie are mutually exclusive. For Pete’s sake.

[hozn]

I will say that the rack looks fairly elegant.

But, yeah, I think they missed the small detail that no self-respecting roadie is gonna use a rack, regardless of how light it is. So then the market is commuters/utilitarian market who typically won’t care how much the rack is gonna weigh (and would have bought a bike with rack mount points). I could see weight being a factor if it is a permanently mounted rack and there is a desire to have the bike still be “nimble” when not using the rack (hence existence of minimalist racks like Tubus Fly ti), but obviously that argument kinda falls apart for a removable rack.

[GovernorSilver]

While I’m not ready to drop $219 on this thing, I do like the idea of a lightweight, quick-release rack.

I’d like to do s touring ride on the Renegade in the near future – could be just a weekend or it could be a just a few more days than that. It would be nice to use the panniers I already have instead of buying a seat bag and/or frame bag – in case my Chrome backpack is not enough, and at the same time not be stuck with a rack that I would never use on regular commute rides.

[sethpo]

I love this design and definitely could see it being useful for long commutes where going faster means saving 20-30 min of commuting time per day. There are times when smaller backpack or large saddle bag isn’t enough and I need the extra space of a pannier but don’t want to bother attaching ye ole metal rack. Not to mention the 18 months I commuted on a road bike before getting a fast commuter.

I could see using it for light touring as well. Imagine being able to slap that baby on your road bike, load up some gear, ride to a remote camp site. Dump gear and rack. Ride some more unloaded.

All that said, the price point doesn’t justify those use cases for me. Still, I’m impressed with the design and hope it does well.

[Emm]

When it comes down to it, the added weight of the rack alone doesn’t do much to slow me down–it’s all the heavy sh*t I put in my panniers that does it. I honestly can’t tell a difference between my commuter road bike pre-and post rack installation when I don’t have the panniers hooked on. It handles the same, I’m just as fast, and it rides just as smooth. Sure, add panniers and it’s a whole new ball game, but without them the difference isn’t noticeable.

I’m too lazy to do the quick-release thing so to me that’s not a huge selling point. I’ve actually bought multiples of certain bike accessories like saddle bags, tubes, tire levers, and lights because I’m too lazy and forgetful to take them off and move them between bikes, so I can’t see a rack being any different. Once I hook an accessory on, it’s not moving off my bike.

[huskerdont]

I have never once put a rack on a bike, but I like this. There are five different bikes I might commute with depending on weather conditions, and I’m not about to do five different mounting setups (not to mention that two bikes wouldn’t work anyway). I use a Banjo Brothers backpack for these reasons and because I don’t want to junk up my road bikes. So, I’m going to keep an eye on it, and if my old back gets to where I can’t use a backpack anymore and I have some extra some money lying around…

The custom skewer is a bit of an issue since it wouldn’t work with my mountain bike or fixie. I guess you’d have to switch out the skewer when you switched bikes too. But for the road and gravel bikes, I like.

[Lt. Dan]

I was up at Trails End Cycling in Purcelville a couple weeks ago, and he had the Topeak Beamrack in stock:

http://www.topeak.com/products/BeamRack-RX

This seems like a much better design and implementation compared to the tailfin… but that’s just me…

[mstone]

@Emm 139159 wrote:

When it comes down to it, the added weight of the rack alone doesn’t do much to slow me down–it’s all the heavy sh*t I put in my panniers that does it. I honestly can’t tell a difference between my commuter road bike pre-and post rack installation when I don’t have the panniers hooked on. It handles the same, I’m just as fast, and it rides just as smooth. Sure, add panniers and it’s a whole new ball game, but without them the difference isn’t noticeable.

Yup. A full rack weights less than two pounds, a light (non carbon!) rack weighs under a pound. If the page was labeled “we made it out of carbon so we could charge more and it looks aero” I’d be less inclined to mock because there wouldn’t be any pretense about what the goal was.

[GovernorSilver]

When I started bike commuting, I thought I’d be one of those rack-and-pannier commuters, and I was. My first bike was the Breezer Uptown 8 and it came with a rack, so I just added the panniers.

Then I got the Chrome backpack because it was on sale and I was thinking the Papal Visit would result in insane car traffic – I figured riding with a backpack instead of panniers would be easier for all the filtering that I might have to do.

Now I’m fairly comfortable riding with a backpack, so that’s why my Renegade doesn’t have a rack. If I want to pick up groceries or whatever on my commute home, I’ll ride the Uptown 8 and bring pannier(s).

I would however like to do a touring trip on the Renegade. If it’s just an overnight ride to Purcellville, the backpack might be enough. If it’s a camping trip, then I’d want something to carry the tent and other supplies. But it may not make sense to put a rack on that I’d use only a couple of times a year. This is where a quick-release rack (the rack itself, not the bag or pannier) might come in handy.

[ian74]

@Lt. Dan 139162 wrote:

I was up at Trails End Cycling in Purcelville a couple weeks ago, and he had the Topeak Beamrack in stock:

http://www.topeak.com/products/BeamRack-RX

This seems like a much better design and implementation compared to the tailfin… but that’s just me…

Yeah, but you wouldn’t want to wrench that thing onto a carbon fiber seatpost. I’ve used something similar on my road bike for a few weeks and a I did not like the way it made the bike handle when loaded. It puts a lot of torsional stress on the seat post and you can feel the sway of it. Also it looked kind of ridiculous.

I think the idea is good, but have some issues with execution, such as the rod that feeds through the rack to mount the pannier. Some of the bumps on the CCT are really harsh, I just don’t know how it could hold up to impact like that over time. I’m happy with my axiom rack (streamliner disc), which mounts to my rear wheel skewer and seat post clamp I bought that has mounting points for screws. I can take it off in about 5 minutes or less. This rack for me, it would be like upgrading from aluminum to carbon!

Sethpo and I are both buying them, we talked about it on the Tweeter.

[huskerdont]

@mstone 139163 wrote:

Yup. A full rack weights less than two pounds,

You really ride around with less than two pounds of gear? My backpack is usually around 15-20 pounds, and once I came back from the grocery and it was over 50. Because beer.

[vern]

@huskerdont 139172 wrote:

You really ride around with less than two pounds of gear? My backpack is usually around 15-20 pounds, and once I came back from the grocery and it was over 50. Because beer.

That is one big backpack if you can stuff that much beer into it. 50 pounds of beer would be roughly 6 gallons, or about 10 six-packs.

[hozn]

@huskerdont 139172 wrote:

You really ride around with less than two pounds of gear?

He was talking about the raw weight of the rack, since the point was that by themselves (unloaded) they don’t add much weight to the bike.

And while 2lbs is a more significant weight % for a WW carbon road bike, I still am straining to see a market of folks that want to put panniers on their carbon bikes. A full rack, once fitted only takes a few minutes to install/remove from a bike (3 or 4 M5 bolts, typically?); it doesn’t seem like this would be overly burdensome for folks that want to carry more than a backpack of gear a few times a year.

[Author]

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