Had the week off between Christmas/New Year and with a Mount Buller road trip planned I set to mounting some lights and making a plate holder for my Single Trail rack. The supplied solution from the vertical rack OEM's that I've seen whilst simple are not very elegant and feel like an afterthought, being an engineer my M.O. is pretty much take something simple and make it complicated. I wanted a solution that was permanently attached to the rack but didn't impede the ease of which the bikes are loaded the catch being that I didn't want it protruding out when there were no bikes on the rack.
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The stalk lights and license plate lights came from an online motorcycle store, thanks for the inspiration
@Plankosaurus and
@Sheepie, nearly all the other materials came from offcuts left over from other projects so overall cost was pretty cheap.
The arm is 40x40 aluminium square tube and the braces are just 3mm rope with some adjustable cam locks so I can set the height to suit whatever bikes are on, originally these braces were going to be aluminium section as well but then I had the issue of how to store them when the arm is stowed. When stowed the arm is held in place with a rare earth magnet bolted to the arm, however the real magic is in the plate mount which was salvaged from an old monitor stand so the number plate can be both pivoted as well as rotated between landscape and portrait mode.
Overall I'm stoked with how it turned out, not sure if it would pass an official muster but I'm putting it in the basket labelled well at least I tried officer.