Surly Bikes
If you just bought a Surly Front Rack from your local bike shop, you may be wondering “how do I mount this thing?” That’s not really what this blog is about, but for starters, take a look at the directions included with your rack. They’re pretty detailed, but if you don’t trust yourself, bring it to your local bike shop along with a six pack and they will be sure to help you out.
However, if you’re that local bike shop and you need to order a rack for that Surly guy/gal and you are wondering what you need, pay attention.
If you bought a rack before the last year or so it came with a metric shit ton of hardware, some of which you definitely needed, and some which you probably put in your spare hardware drawer. Stainless bolts are relatively cheap but a metric shit ton of stainless hardware is not. We decided to optimize the hardware used in our front racks so you have only what you need to mount it to a Surly bike with rack bosses on the fork*.
Within the last year we got caught in a bit of a pickle and some racks shipped with only pavement bike hardware (Straggler, Cross Check, Long Haul Trucker, and Disc Trucker). If you were missing the unicrown hardware and still need some, please get ahold of us and we will set things straight. We have now straightened everything out, but there are some new part numbers/kits.
RK0105 and RK0106
These part numbers are for the Surly front rack (silver and black respectively) which come with the appropriate hardware and mounting plates for both unicrown (think mountain type bikes) and lugged crown (think pavement type bikes) forks.
RK0128
This is a replacement kit for unicrown forks. It comes with all of the plates and hardware for Surly bikes with unicrown forks
RK0127
This is a replacement kit for lugged crown forks. It comes with all of the plates and hardware for Surly bikes with lugged crown forks
RK0126
This is a mid-blade adapter kit. It includes a mid-blade adapter, backing plate, and hose clamps to mount a rack to a Surly or non-Surly bike that doesn’t have mid blade bosses on the fork. This kit doesn’t include any of the hardware or plates to mount the rack.
In addition to the kits we also sell pairs of rack mounting plates on their own.
RK0136
We call this “Plate A” which is the lower mounting plate for all fork types. It works on Surly bikes with any type of brake and mounts to the fork end eyelet.
RK0137
We call this “Plate B” which is the upper offset sliding plate. This is used on Surly bikes with lugged crown forks*.
RK0138
We call this “Plate C” which is the upper flat sliding plate. It is used on Surly bikes with unicrown forks*. It is designed to be used in either orientation depending on the application, but it looks best when run in the orientation below.
The Surly Front Rack can be used on non-Surly bikes, but the hardware and plates are designed to work best with Surly bikes.
*There are a few Surly bikes that don’t come equipped with mid-blade bosses on the fork which will require the use of RK0126 in order to mount the front rack. The Pacer and Steamroller are the two pavement type bikes that fall into this category. The 1x1 is the unicrown fork that falls into this category. Any bike that comes stock with a suspension fork will obviously not work with the front rack. The Front rack doesn't have enough adjustability to fit 29+ wheels. In addition, the front rack is not designed to work with our Omni type bikes, check out the new 8 and 24 pack racks for Omni bike rack options.
About Slippers Cortez
Well hello there, meet Ben, aka Slippers Cortez. Ben is one of the Engineers here at Surly. When Ben isn’t doing bike math and drawings, he’s likely enjoying a beer and playing the mandolin with his brothers in their folk/bluegrass band, The Thirsty River. If you don’t know what a mandolin is, there’s a google for that. If you meet Ben, you’ll notice that he’s the most Minnesotan person you know. We mean that in the best of ways of course. So the next time you're straddling your Surly, think of Ben, because he just might be thinking about you too.