Rackaleur?

A year or two ago we found a case of new-old-stock handlebar bag supports. They are a sort of combination rack and decaleur. A Rackaleur? I had one of these in my youth and really liked it. It allowed me use a TA bar bag on my old French racing bike. There were several version of these made, but I think the model in the photo was best. The original instructions show how the rackaleur works:



The rackaleur allows you to carry a traditional handlebar bag on just about any bike with a quill stem. Of course the weight is high and on the handlebars which is not ideal, but I've found that with light loads it's fine.

That case of new-old-stock rackaleurs sold out very quickly, but I kept one for myself. And I've been thinking that they should be made again. Is anyone interested?

More VO Cinema

Here's a video about installing our new chain ring guards. We also have some of the hardware separately, should you want it use it on another chain ring guard.


VO Chainring Guard from Velo Orange on Vimeo.

And, in case you missed it, there is a video about installing a Rackaleur.


the Rackaleur from Velo Orange on Vimeo.

Proforma Invoices

Lots of proforma invoices have been crossing my desk recently. That's great news because a proforma invoice is usually soon followed by a real invoice. And the real invoices are sent when goods are shipped. So this means that lot's of stuff is due to be shipped to us in the next few weeks. And we could sure use more stuff!

If you've been shopping at our site you may know that we are out of too many items. As I've mentioned before, we've had a great winter. Except for a couple of weeks after Christmas, there was no slowdown of the sort many bike shops expect in winter. In fact VO's business has almost doubled since last year. Thank you! But the bad part of this is that because we must place orders with factories 3 to 6 months ahead of time and because we hadn't anticipated the increase in sales, we are really low on inventory. That's not a good position to be in during the even busier Spring season.

In other news, we are starting to get quotes and samples of products we requested in Taiwan. At last count we were looking at over 80 new products. I just approved production of one of the new chain guards. The rackaleur is now in prototype stage. Stainless steel decaleurs, porteur racks and rear constructeur racks are about to go into production in a new factory (the samples look terrific). Then there are the frames; I'll have a post about them soon. As always, it's busy at VO.

Taipei Cycle Show Update #3

The new factory that will be making our racks has all the tooling set up and showed us production samples of porteur racks, rear constructeur racks, and decaleurs. They are all stainless steel and look fantastic. The quality is much much better than I'd hoped for. These are the new pre-drilled versions that should make mounting much simpler. We will have the samples in our office in a couple of weeks (They didn't fit in our luggage.) As soon as we check all dimensions and mount them on a few bikes we'll OK the production run. They should arrive here 8-10 weeks later. The front rando racks, in canti mount too, are the next project.


We dropped off plans for the Rackaleur plans and should be getting prices for tooling and production in a few weeks.

Here is a photo of the 110/74 Sugino double crank I mentioned. It will be silver; they make strange colors for display. It has outboard bearings. I don't have pricing yet, but would imagine $150-$175 with the BB. The crank is aimed at Gran Fondo riders.


At the factory that makes our fenders we analyzed and discussed fender hardware for a very long time. The owner was very receptive to our needs and seemed glad to get the feedback from our customers that we passed on. His factory has been making metal fenders for bikes and scooters for more than 30 years, but I get the feeling that it's rare for clients to be so involved in the design process and he seemed to appreciate it. The factory will make several changes to our hardware that should, I hope, make it even better than Honjo hardware. I'll also soon post a photo of a new stay design that we may use. By the way, we will have a VO Daruma bolt. Additionally there will soon be polished versions of VO alloy fenders. A little later we'll have a VO hammered fender or two and we'll be ordering tooling for some new shapes.

Our handlebars are made at three different factories and we discussed the new VO drop bars with two of them. I hope we see at least one of the new models this summer. I was glad to see sophisticated testing machines at the various factories. The photo is of a machine that tests handlebars for fatigue failure; it repeatedly pushed down on the bars.


We are also looking for a second model of VO seat post. This one will have moderate setback and cost a little less. We saw a few interesting new designs, but this one struck me as being particularly well thought out. It is very smooth and easy to adjusts as well as being light. There is another 2-bolt post I'm considering as well.

Finally, here's another interesting stem design.

Idea Day

VO customers are pretty amazing. Not only do they keep us in business, they send us great idea to share. Check out the items below. All of these were in our inbox yesterday.



Phillip sent us a video of his very clever folding bike mechanism. If VO ever makes a folding bike this might be the way to do it. He writes:

I designed it a while ago, but over Christmas I finally got around to making a prototype. The idea was to create a folding mechanism that could be applied to many types of triangular framed bicycles. Think of it more as a "its raining so I'll get the bus home" rather than a Brompton rival!

Peter did a great job building up his '83 and '84 Lotus Classiques. Not only are there lots of VO parts, but checkout the great leather bits. Peter's comments are in the captions.

The toeclip leathers obviously lend themselves very well to being laced up as covers on brake and shift levers.The handgrips were only a little bit trickier.  I tripped across a pair of pleather-covered ergo-style bar grips at my LBS that were just too cheap to avoid experimenting with and VO just happened to be out of stock of the cork grips I had originally planned to use.  I stripped off the obnoxiously slippery pleather covering, mounted the remaining shaped rubber grips on the handlebars and laced a set of your city bike elkhide bar covers over the grips, using toeclip leathers as extra gussets on the underside so the covers could be laced up around the much bigger diameter.  I think the pictures pretty well show how it's done.  I would expect that VO cork grips would work just as well under the elkhide covers.

 I first discovered VO looking for something to replace the early-version Brooks leather bar tape that faded from its original rich honey color to a sickly-looking greenish gray in little more than a week - despite liberal wiping with Proofhide and very little exposure to sun or weather.  I ran across a vintage Italian original-equipment leather-covered handlebar on eBay and started hunting for some kind of lace-up leather product (like, maybe steering wheel covers) that I could use to make a similar handlebar.  For quite a while I wasn't finding anything until VO launched its elkhide handlebar and toeclip covers.  A sidebar VO blog item about somebody in Japan making leather covers for brake-lever hoods appeared about the same time - which weren't available here.  And I put two and two together and fabricated my own leather brake hood covers using toeclip leathers for gussets and some extra bar-cover leather.

And the toeclip leathers also worked well as pads to quiet any rattling of the SS water bottle from VO against the cage.  VO of course wasn't making bottle cages back then.

Peter also sent us this link showing how he used a VO Rackaleur to support an OYB bag. And how to use that bag as a saddle bag.

Speaking of saddle bags, George got a Minnehaha medium saddle bag to use as a front bag. We tried it here and it works very well, at least on small-to-average sized frames. Everything I need for work, including my 12.5" Thinkpad, just fits. Might be a nice commuter setup.

The back-strap on the bag fits over the front rack's "backstop" or integrated decaleur.

Rackaleur

Back in the day, several manufacturers made handlebar mounted racks/decaleurs for traditional front bags. These "rackaleurs" were not intended to replace a front rack on a touring or rando bike, but rather to allow a simple way to mount your bag on a bike that lacked a front rack, on your racing bike for example. In fact I used one on my racing bike for many years and many thousands of miles. It allowed me to carry my ancient Leica camera and some extra cloths on training rides.

Rackaleurs hold the bag higher than is ideal, but if you carry a light load they work quite well. On bumpy roads, however, I recommend using an old toe clip strap or loop of bungy cord to connect the bag to the head tube (as in the photo) to prevent the bag from bouncing around when going over large bumps.

We bought a NOS case of these a couple of years ago ago and they quickly sold out, so we decided to make reproductions. The new rackaleurs just arrived and are now available in the Velo Orange store and through VO dealers.

Note that Rackaleurs fit on traditional quill stems, those shaped like the Nitto Technomic. They don't work with most threadless stems because threadless stems are usually too wide. They do fit on aero-style quill stems, but may need to be bent down a little in order to sit level.

Slow Sellers

Lots of VO components and accessories sell well beyond our expectations, but I thought I'd write about a few that don't. I really like these and don't understand why they are not more popular. Maybe if I explain why I like them?

Rackaleurs should be a lot more popular. I used one of these in my youth and loved it. As a poor student, I could only afford one bike and that was my race bike. But even then I liked long rides in the country and being able to carry a few luxuries such as a jacket and camera. So I'd slip the Rackaleur over my bars, strap on my TA handlebar bag, and set off on an all-day ride. There is more info on how it works in this post. Based on manufacturing cost, they should be about $45, but we lowered the price to $30 in hopes that enough folks would try them and spread the word.

VO Deep Half Clips are actually pretty popular and sell well enough, but I think they should be one of our top products. They are just so nice on city and utility bikes. Of course you can't pull up, as with toe straps, but being able to spin fast without slipping off the pedals is a big deal to me.


Finally, we put our sprung saddles, the Model 5 and Model 8, on sale. These are great saddles not only on city bikes, but also on touring bikes. They really help smooth out potholed roads. The only downside is the added weight of the springs and frame, a small price to pay for comfort if you're not in a hurry.

What's your favorite non-mainstream bike bit?

Plans and News

I thought I'd write about some of the projects we're currently working on.

• We've just approved prototypes of the new VO hammered and polished fenders. These, like Honjo fenders, are reproductions of classic French fender designs. They will initially be available in 45mm and 50mm widths for 700c wheels and 60mm wide for 650b wheels. More sizes are likely in the future.
  
• We are also working on three new VO bags. A new VO British-style saddle bag is in the prototype stage. It's shaped roughly like a Carradice Nelson Longflap, but a little narrower. It will be heavy black canvas with lots of brown leather trim, including leather edge tape and piping. It will be called the "Inverness bag".
  
• A small rack-top bag, the "Eclair bag" is also on the way. It will use the same materials.
  
• After months of indecision we have finalized a VO Pannier design. It will be in the general style of the Ostrich and classic French panniers and use the same materials as the other VO bags. It will be taller and narrower than the classic bags to provide better heel clearance. Depending on how many rounds of prototypes it takes to get these three bags exactly right, they may arrive in 4-6 months.
• The VO Rackaleur is close to going into production.
• We will be working on a high end riding glove, as pictured above.

Please don't ask me when the new parts will be available or how much they will cost. There are simply too many variables to give a reasonably accurate answer.

In other news, the first shipment of the new Porteur racks will arrive next week. These will be priced at $160 including the rail and all hardware. The US made racks, including the rail, used to cost $235! And the quality is of these is great. The first 50 are coming by air and may sell out, but the rest will arrive by ship in about two weeks

The container due at the end of the month will include several new products, among them:

• VO cable housing and cable kits in various colors.
• VO squeal-free brake pads. These have received great reviews from everyone who has tried the prototypes, super stopping power and no brake squeal or your money back.
• VO threadless stems in 25.4mm size.
• New chrome plated expandable bar plugs