This is the easiest-to-install and most rigid rear rack we've seen or used or sold. It's our design, and sets up perfectly on bikes with normal or loooong chainstays, like on our current frames. The rack sits level and tucks in close for use as a saddlebag support when it's not carrying panniers. Unlike a lot of other racks out there, there's no tombstone that pokes into the bottom of a saddlebag. If you let the straps out and the spacing is right, a saddlebag will sit nicely on top. If you've got a super tall frame and want to support a bag, consider a strut-mounted Nitto RBW51 instead.
It's tubular stainless steel, TIG-welded by experts in Taiwan. It's shiny when new, maybe time will mellow it, we just don't know. It shouldn't rust, anyway.
Like all of our big racks, it's triangulated at the stress joints to isolate the main welds from stress. It is hard to imagine the kind of alien forces that would break this rack. If yours breaks in normal use, we simply won't believe you...sorry.
It weighs a bit under two pounds, middle-of-the-road for rear racks.
We designed it to be perfect with our BackaBike bags (panniers), but it ought to work with others, and it's easy to adjust the height.
It comes with a variety of M5 bolts and washers that'll do the trick on most bikes out there. If you have one of our bikes with the beefier M6 braze-ons, get these bolts also. For more mounting options, scroll to the bottom of this description.
The only DIY part that's even halfway tricky is bending the sliding stays to mate up with the seat stay braze-ons, and sometimes to lift the rack up high enough to clear a 29 x 2.4-inch tire. The stays are bendable by hand and we suggest finding a household cylinder that matches the angle you need. We've used a Kleen Kanteen here, but it could be a kettlebell, tuna can, or a Chock-Full-o'-Nuts steel coffee can. There's something in every house that'll work. Bolt the struts together first for an even bend on both.
And you have to slightly spread the rack (pre-tension it) to make it fit on the outside of the lower eyelets. It's easy, you'll get it.
We're working on instructions to include - there aren't any yet, but if you have questions, call us.
Nitto makes the smoothest, most luscious racks we've ever seen, and 99 percent of the racks we've sold ever since 1994 have been Nitto racks. But love them as we do, and we do, let me repeat: We do---Nitto rear racks require more than a necessary amount of patience and skill to install.
On top of that, the prices are super high and climbing, and lead times are longer than ever, and all in all these were among the factors that set us on another course for this particular rack.
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Torque Specs
