Milk Crate Attachment

I've been doing my groceries on the Cetma rack with a basket for about a year and a half and it has served me very well. My only complaint has been the interface between my basket and the rack. Thus far I've always used bungees. It never comes off, and it's reasonably fast to put on and take off, but I would prefer something that couldn't wiggle. When I've got 40 lbs of groceries up there and I'm trying to hold a track stand, small wiggles make a big difference.I had a number of ideas on this one but the clear material of choice ended up being 16 ga bailing wire.

I started by putting a small bail on the back of the crate to slide over the back of the rack. This will keep the crate from sliding forward once anchored at the bottom but also serves to keep it in place while I'm attaching it at the bottom.

Here you can see the wire bail that neatly fits over the back of the rack.

The attachment device needed to be extremely secure but also able to just snap on and off. For a long time I had been scheming up ways to use standard draw hasps but they would invariably require me to mount some wood to the crate and the rack. The next idea was some type of over-center buckle with a similar type of action but for webbing. I would have a strap that goes from one lip of the basket, under the rack and then back up to the other lip that could be instantly tightened with the flip of a lever. No such piece of hardware was immediately available (I found a place I could order such buckles, but there was a minimum order of 500 pieces), so I came up with a way to manufacture such a buckle. When I was at the hardware store selecting my materials to manufacture my over-center buckle, I came across this spiffy little device. It's intended use is tugging barbed wire fencing tight across the posts. For all the effort I would put into making a buckle that may not work anyways, it seemed that I would be wise to just grab this thing and call it done.

The next piece I added to the basket was a pair of small loops that hung off the bottom. The wire tightener would grab the two loops and draw the basket tight to the rack. When the loops are being used, they need to hang down, but once I take the basket off the rack, I need them to stay tucked flat against the bottom of the crate to avoid getting bent. I glued small magnets to the bottom of the milk crate to keep the wire loops out of the way when they weren't needed.

Here you're looking up at the crate sitting on the rack with the two loops being pulled tight across the bottom of the rack.

I also found a very convenient place to store the wire tug when I wasn't using it.

Here's the first load of groceries I did with the new set up. The on/off was as smooth and quick as I could ask, but while riding, the basket didn't budge, sucess!