Rear Rack, Plan C

A couple of years ago, a tree limb fell the house I was renting.  Landlords sent people to remove it and, I assume, make sure there was no real damage to their house.  When I got home, I noticed that Baby didn't look right.  Turns out they dropped the limb on my bike!

There wasn't much damage and the landlord paid for most of it.  I say most because I didn't realize my rear rack was fubar until I took it off to tweak the luggage back into place.  Crap!  So after many months of looking for someone to repair it, I decided to go to Plan B and get a used rack that I saw on eBay.

The thing was fugly but functional and would work until I figured out what to do about my rack.  So fugly that I only took a two pictures of the thing after I picked up a used Shad case to replace the broken jcwhitney case that I got on a sale however many years ago.

 
I love the Shad case, but that rack was just ugly enough to keep me looking for ways to fix my 5 Stars rack.  Well things got shifted onto the back burner so I didn't think about the rack anymore except for how ugly it was because it did what it was supposed to do.

As I was prepping the bike for this year's Fall Gather at TWoS, I noticed a crack in the rack.  Well now the back burner is starting to warm up.  Whatever, I'll fix it when I get back.  Right.  It broke at the rally.  I chose to leave my stuff at TWoS, go home and get the car to retrieve it.  That night a diligent eBay searched revealed a Plan C:  A Hepco Becker rack that was only missing the top aesthetic piece.  SOLD!

It looks a lot better than that no name homemade rack that didn't really slot into place.  Best of all I figured out how to put the Shad plate on top of it.

You can even see the broken rack in the background ready for the trash where it belongs.  I guess the 5 Stars rack will be trashed too but I can't bring myself to do it just yet.  It's unobtanium and I still believe it can be fixed.

Looking at the broken rack, I'm glad I never tried to figure out how to go back to the FZ1 Touring configuration of Baby I had when the tree was dropped on him.  I just stuck with only the Trunk.  The Hepco Becker has even better options for adding the Chinese Luggage Cases (Chivi?) I got a few years ago.  Maybe he'll go back to Touring configuration with the better rack and me more used to 2 up riding.

Now I just have to meet up with Cruzman to retrieve my case.  But Baby is as ready for the road as he's gonna be for a minute.  He needs tires but that's likely a Christmas thing since I spent some of the tire money on a new rack.  Since rain washed out a ride day, I have enough rubber for one more day ride until I can get new tires.  I guess I'll use it to catch up with Cruzman and get my case!

Thanks for reading, 

patrice, theWolfTamer