Widgets Wanted thread? Starting with a rack to fork crown plate

[jameso]

Been clearing the garage recently and have a stash of useful bits that haven't been useful to me in what, 10 years? But too potentially handy to bin them.

Thought it may be good to have a widgets wanted thread - post up what you need for that job and maybe someone will have it in their useful bits box / box of chaos.

I'm after one of these rack to fork crown plates, a reasonably long one. Can be bought for £10 or so but this is a cheap bodge job.. Anyone got one for beer £ / postage?

[Lazarus]

cannot help but I like the thread idea as I also store stuff too good to throw away not worth enough to sell

[thenorthwind]

Good idea for a thread, one that could be handy for me in the very near future, but I'll try and contribute to too.

Can't immediately help you, having been in a very similar situation, but my post on the cheery Friday thread from last week might be useful as an alternative solution if you have some that just aren't long enough? Not the bit where I mutilated it with an angle grinder and a welder, but where I put a little brass tube in as a spacer. Not sure if that would work for you... the ones in your pic being flat, rather than right angled to take a bolt through the fork crown brake mount. I had the bit of tube lying around and it happened to be almost the perfect length - you can buy short lengths off ebay for not very much at all, as I did to make some spacers for stair rod fittings that had to go over a thick carpet. Other materials (presumably) available.

Since I'm here, I'm about to make some of these out of a bit of stainless sheet, since they're out of stock everywhere, unless someone has a pair?

[jameso]

Nice work there NW. The plate in the pic I assumed would need bending to suit the bike + rack but the one in your post is much thicker. I've found something to do the job, a steel strip ~2mm thick but something a bit stiffer but able to be bent past 90 deg at the crown tab end would be better.

[thenorthwind]

Cheers. I had a look at the SJS one and it's 4mm, which is the same as mine. There's no way you're getting a right angle in that if it's anything like mine. The one that came with my rack was pre-bent to fit around a rim brake (presumably at high temperature or whatever in the factory) - the instructions said it may need bending a little to fit, but you'd really struggle to move it far. Makes me wonder what you're meant to do with the SJS one - maybe add a little angle bracket to fit it to the crown?

[jameso]

Perhaps the SJS strips are for something different to what I had in mind. tbh I just grabbed the image to illustrate the sort of thing I meant - but you're right, 4mm won't bend to fit.