treadnorth: Antlers and Fat bike car rack adaptors...

Alright, two random things to post. First- anyone who's done any amount of cycling has picked something up in their tire that delays their ride a bit. Could be a nail, glass, tacks thrown on to your Tour de France stage, or in the case of a MN fat bike ride- an entire deer antler! No joke, a friend of mine was taking a test ride on my Mukluk, and while rolling through the MN River Bottoms flood plain area, came to a very quick stop after having an antler wrap itself around my Larry 3.8, and jamming in the Enabler fork. It's got clearance for most things, but apparently not animal parts.

Caused some abrupt decelerating...:)

Second- I'm sure most of you fat-bikers out there have come up with solutions as to how to transport your bike, but I'm gonna add my method to the lists in case you're still searching. I've subscribed to the "build your own spacer kit" plan that is found on many forum threads and other's blogs. The general problem (simplified) is that a fat bike fork is 135mm wide, and a standard fork mount on everybody's car racks is 100mm wide. You can make a "spacer plug" for each side of your fork mount that will extend it's total width to accommodate a fat bike fork. It's quite simple. Just find an old front quick release axle that you can cut in half (I went to a used bike parts store in Uptown MPLS). It needs to be a front axle, because otherwise it won't slide into your rack's quick release core. (Some say this can create a problem with the finished product, as your fork will be mounting to a 9mm "front" axle rather than a 10mm "rear" axle. I would say this depends on the dropouts on your fork. I didn't have any negative effects from this, my Enabler has plenty of room in the dropout area, and if you're worried, I suppose you could wrap 1mm worth of tape around the axle where your fork will contact it. But anyway, back to basic instructions. Collect 17.5mm worth of nuts you can put on each half. This is the difference of 35mm between a regular and fat fork, remember. Make sure the outer plug adaptor nut is grooved just like the one on your bike's hub that is in connection with your fork while mounted. Tighten them all together with either cone or c wrenches, as appropriate to the size of the nut used, so that they leave the same clearance at the end for you fork as the hub on your bike (I think it's about 3.5-4mm from memory, but I'd measure first). There you have it- just remove your rack's fork mount quick release, slide your homemade plug adaptors in each side, and simply use the quick release from your bike's front hub to attach your fork to your rack. I think I paid $6 for the whole mess, and that's only because I had to buy an entire used front hub to get the axle. If you found just the axle at a used parts place, I bet you could do this for around a buck. That's considerable cheaper than the industry's commercial adaptors that go for $60-90. Oh, and for the rear wheel, I just use a basic nylon strap. It fits well on my Yakima Sprocket Rocket, which is pretty wide as it is. If you have a narrower rack tray you may need to continue with your creativity in making something that fits into the tray and will accommodate your big honking tire. I believe in you.

Your new "plug spacer adaptor things"...