Hey all, i love my minoura b/c it is cheap and light and mainly it allows me to use a saddle bag. However, that flimsy metal bracket keeps bending and bottoming out. Is there a solution to this?
Thanks,
Dan
www.aiatriathlon.com
I bought a 1/2 peice of angle iron and tapped out the holes and it worked great. Won’t budge like the flimsy piece of alum.
I’ve reinforced the bracket with a thick zip tie around each side after it’s mounted and that has worked pretty well.
thanks…is this obtainable at a hardware store?
I got a heavy piece of steel as the bracket with mine. I have to dremel the heck out of it to get it to fit under my arione with PD razor seatpost. and again for the arione carbon but it now works pretty well (oh I also glued a couple washers to it to make it wider so it did not rattle (the Ti rails were too skinny to get a good grip)
good luck
After making a couple of brackets out of steel I bought another one. When that one messed up I bought the XLab flatwing.
It’s in it’s second season and is as good as when I bought it.
jaretj
My guess is these home repairs cost more than a new one. Just buy another one!
mine did the same thing - bought a flatwing. tried to get another from minoura but got no response from email.
only problem is the old bracket only lasts me one bump ;).
Maybe a flatwing is in my future.
Can you still use a saddle bag?
It’s too bad you’re having problems. Mine is 6 years old and has been on/off my bike over a hundred times, never had a problem.
I did get a Tacx single cage (rear) in the mail yesterday which used the same rear clamp (but has a plastic cage).
In your situation, I’d drill out the hole and use a nut/bolt.
I made a homemade version of the X-wing out of 2" aluminum bar from Home Depot. Although it took LOTS of time to get right (I made 3 of the 5 pieces twice), the total cost was about $25 ($10 for the aluminum bar, $10 for the tap/bit combo, and about $5 for the screws). You do need at least a clamp, hacksaw and a flat file too, but most people have this stuff.
I suppose I could have dropped the $80 for a flatwing or $100 for a hydrotail, but I kind of just wanted to make my own.
I was really surprised at how a good home design can be as good or better than the commercially available brackets. It’s actually pretty light too! After I made mine, I looked at it from the front to find that only the water bottle cages themselves were visible. The rest of the bracket was almost completely obscured by the seat. Then, I painted it with some black spray-on appliance epoxy and it’s the last thing you would even notice when you look at my bike from the side. I used a flimsy attachment system to start off with (some nylon thingies designed for coaxial cable–happens to be about the diameter of a seat rail), but they failed THE MORNING OF A RACE, so I came up with a better way, involving some 1/2" round aluminum rod. Now it’s really on there good–I think I could stand on the bracket while it’s attached to my bike and it would hold my weight.
Edit: (I’m really sorry this is so long.) If my seatpost was round (have a P3C) I could easily use a saddle bag with this bracket.
it could have to do with my seat rails too?
I love everything but the bracket about the minoura.
Have any pictures? Would like to see your handywork.
Yeah. I’m sure all the triathlete-machinists and coach-engineers will have fun with this one. Remember, I don’t have a welder, so I had to use lots of screws:
The fastening “system” is just four 1" pieces of 1/2" aluminum rod drilled, tapped and milled out to accept the seat rail. It looks a little rough with the 22 screws that holds it together and to the bike, but it doesn’t look that bad on the bike (and I think it is complemented by the gatorade left over from todays ride):
But more importantly, the bracket itself is not that visible from the front of the bike:
Um, so yeah…that’s my Ghetto-Wing-Tail.
I’m impressed!
it looks like it is made of sheet metal. if i may ask, exactly what type AL bar did you start with (dimensions, thickness) ? thanks.
Nope, it’s aluminum. I used the part of it that they put the price/description sticker on, but the bar itself is 1/8 of an inch thick and 1.5" wide. I may have said 2" bar earlier in this thread, but I just measured it and it’s 1.5". It’s nothing special, just the stuff you can get at home depot in the screw aisle (I’m pretty sure all HDs set up exactly the same).