Andre and Lee visited a few weeks ago to build a couple of porteur racks. They were finished a few weeks later. Andre’s rack is for a 700C Kogswell P/R fork which he installed onto a Surly Long Haul Trucker. Lee built a rack for his Surly Pugsley.

Andre’s rack on the Kogswell fork:

Lee looking Surly on his Pugsley with the porteur rack (there is also one of me riding the bike):

Head shot of the Pugsley rack showing it’s asymmetric design (remember, the dropouts are not centered):

The Pugs handles pretty well with the big load, those 4″ tires have a lot of pneumatic trail. On the same day Andre proved that the Pugsley tires don’t fit onto standard 559mm rims (even Sun Doublewide) — they require a rim with a deep drop section.

Lathe project for the aquarium

We have a moderately large (60 gallon) planted aquarium in our living room. For a long time I’ve wanted a way to watch the water temp as we fill the aquarium. Our normal method involved one person adjusting the valves on the sink and the other feeling the water coming out of a hose 25′ away.

I used the lathe to make this simple aluminum tube with hose barbs at each end. A liquid crystal thermometer is stuck onto it. It gives instant reading of the fill water temp and didn’t take long to make. This photo isn’t great, but the thermometer reads 76 degrees (the green block in the middle).

And back to Racks…

Finally a picture of how I jigged a Rene Herse style fork crown mount while brazing. This went onto the rack for my Pass and Stow bag that I recently blogged about. A Kant Klamp is clamping the U shaped piece to a bit of flat stock, and that is leaning in the vise.