Bike Shop Horrors: Basket Mount

A customer at the shop dropped off a "comfort bike" for a tune up the other day with a Wald wire "paper boy" front basket mounted to it.

Now when Wald designed this accessory, they never accounted for bikes with suspension forks or super long head tubes. Add in a tall stem, and the mounts on the basket that attach to the handle bars make the lower struts far too short to reach the wheel axle, where the lower strut is supposed to be attached.

Never fear! Shade Tree Mechanic is here!

Note the threaded hook, much like you might see used on a traditional clothes line, which has been employed to clamp the upper part of the chromed steel stanchion on the suspension fork. Instead of hack sawing it off to a decent length, the owner looks to have used a spacer, (why? I can't really say), and then used two nuts to one- tighten the hook against the stanchion and pinch the rack stay to it, and two- to jamb the inner nut so it can not back off. (Why not just use a washer instead of the spacer and a Nyloc nut? Ahh........who am I kidding?! These guys are grabbing what is at hand.  And of course, the whole idea of attaching to the fork stanchion......bah!)

Anyway, the threaded portion must have been protruding out further than the owner was comfortable with so he nipped it off with what appears to have been a bolt cutter, leaving a nice, jagged steel edge to snag on, or worse- Cut you to ribbons.

And just to give the guy some well deserved credit, he actually uses this bike to grocery shop with, leaving his car at home. Bonus points there at least. 

Awesome! This is the kind of stuff that keeps me going in the dead of winter.