My buddy Dan wants his 1971 Raleigh International converted to a 650b randonneur with a Wald front rack. Dan is a busy family man so we meet at my day job and discussed the project. He needed the rear end widened to fit a 135mm wide wheel, cantilever mounts front and rear, rack mounts and the struts to make that happen and I needed the brazing practice. Perfect!

Excited to get going I adjusted the rear end first using a BB post mounted to a Bridgeport table.

Next it was onto brake mounts. I like this fixture and it works well but when time permits I’m going to make a better one. This was also the first time I tried Fillet Pro from Cycle Design. I’M A FAN!

Onto the fork. The fork needed brake and rack mounts. This is the first rack I’ve mounted so it is completely new to me. I haven’t ever owned a bike with a rack either. Dan was awesome in helping me with images for examples of exactly what he wanted.

The next thing I did was dimple the chainstays to clear the new 650b x 42 meaty tires. I made a pair of vice grips so I could dimple built frames as opposed to dimpling the tubing before assembling the frame.

With the frame and fork done my next step was mounting the rack. I machined this headset spacer / top rack mount on a 4 axis horizontal Haas CNC milling machine.

You’ll see how this works later.

The Wald rack came with some beastly mounting struts. I wasn’t about to use them to mount to this rack. Using some 4130 tubing and solid stock I machined the strut parts.

Then brazed ’em up!

MUCH nicer (and lighter) than the big ass piece of bent metal that was supplied with the rack.

With the bottom struts taken care of it was onto the top.

Again, confusing now but keep on scrolling and it’ll all come together.

I had to put some mounting slots in the back mounting plate of the rack and what a better way to do so than the tomb stone fixture on the Horizontal.

Finally finished brazing the top struts so now these pics should sum that all up.

Well, here is the finished product. Dan has already told me that he is going to get a poodle so he can carry it on the rack! Can’t wait for pics of that!

This project brought me a load of new challenges and I greatly appreciate his patience with my learning curve and I hope he loves the bike for years!

Thanks for making it to the bottom of this post.

Ride safe!
Allan Varcoe

Here is his Flickr feed.