Starting to think about Adventure Bike Front Racks

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As I described in a previous post I finally made a choice on what bike to buy for my Stelvio 2019 adventure. Next step in the process is to find a good front pannier rack as I do not want to have all my gear in rear panniers for various reasons.

Reasons to use front racks

Gives you a more balanced bike for climbing. Ever noticed how the front wheel gets off the ground while climbing steeper gradients? Add some rear panniers and you get a really back-heavy bike setup and I am unsure how well a back-racks only bike would handle the alps. Putting some of the load on the front wheel will help keeping it on the road while climbing up to the Stelvio and Gavia passes. My plan is pretty much to just have the tent on the rear rack and all other gear in front panniers

Options of front racks

There seems to be a lot of different front rack models out there and I was pretty much lost on what to buy until I did some reading.

So, I will go for a low-rider front rack on my Kona Sutra 2019, so now that we have that narrowed down lets look at different models available that have caught my eye for various reasons. I.e. my short-list of low-rider front racks that I am interested in.

Model	Weight	Max-carry	Material	Platform	Price
Tubus Tara	530 g	15 kg	CroMo 10mm	No	54 €
Specialized Pizza Rack	-	15 kg	Aluminium 13mm	Yes	65 €
Blackburn Outpost	726 g	20.5 kg	Aluminium -	Yes	70 €
Bontrager Carry Forward	-	15 kg	-	Yes	60 €
Surly Nice Front Rack 2.0	1382 g	32 kg	CroMo 10 mm	Yes	120 €

Damn hard to find information about weight and material on these things. One would think that the information should be readily available as cycling people tend to count the grams but I guess touring and bikepacking people are not like the racer/mtb crowd. But as it turns out at least I have to count the grams as I am over 100 kg myself and don't want to carry too much extra weight with me.
So the Specialized Pizza Rack and Bontrage Carry Forward just don't make the cut as I don't know their weight.

So, question: is 196 grams something to care about?

Lets look at what that is in other stuff to get perspective on the otherwise very abstract numbers:

Canister for a canister stove: 230 g
or Pair of socks: 60 g , so 3 pair of socks
or Apple: 100 g, so 2 apples
or Pasta Bolognese expedition ration: 550 g, so half a ration
or Snickers bar: 50 g, so 4 bars
or Bike cap: 50 g

So in the end, maybe 200 grams are not critical for my first trip.

Way forward

So now that I have some numbers I have some months to decide on the Tubus Tara or Blackburn Outpost rack to get. Question might be if I can load the tent above the front panniers on the platform and get rid of the back rack setup. And if I get rid of the back-rack, maybe it is better to go all in with the Surly Nice Rack? Oh, budget..
Luckily I don't have to decide today : )

Six weeks later

So I ordered the Surly Nice Rack 2.0 silver version 2 days ago and it is being shipped to me as I write this. Why the Surly Nice Rack? Seems to be the sturdiest of the once in the list, I don't want it to break. And I got a nice deal for it due to Swedish Fathers Day sale. Looking forward to it. Will post pictures of the unpacking when it arrives.