Shiny Rear Rack

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, tucks in close for use as a saddlebag support when it's not carrying panniers, and is easy to slide back far if you're a big-footed fella riding a bike with tragically short chainstays and trying to get heel clearance with panniers.

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 mandrel 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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See also our unnecessary but inexpensive custom bolt-and-washer selection that fits our bike braze-ons perfectly. They're unnecessary but ideal. Here's how they shake out:

• On some of our bikes, the lower attachment braze-ons are M6 (slightly fatter than standard M5). M = metric, 6 & 5 = millimeters. Almost all bike frame braze-ons are M5, and the Shiny rack comes with M5s. If you need M6, you get them with copper washers. 

• The seat-stay rack braze-ons are always M5. For these, we supply M5 bolts with brass washers. They're goldish for now.

• The rack-to-seat stay sliders come with socket heard (standard style) M5 heads. The slightly upgraded bolts we supply are M5 button-head (low profile, rounded) bolts and come with bronze washers.

So, if you buy them all, you'll get copper, brass, and bronze washers. In this case, the original bolts will be spares that fit braze-ons on any other bike. If your bike has only M5 braze-ons and you want the copper washers, buy the M6 bolts just to get the washers. We ain't selling washers separately, but you can find them online, no doubt.

Torque Specs