I gave up looking for Chinese ultralight bike racks. For several years, I purchased some of the $20 standard racks and then machined them lighter on my mill and made my own side supports that route down to an Old Man Mountain through axle.
The problem I have is that my welding of aluminum is mediocre at best, and on long multi day rides, some of my welds would fail. (Thank goodness for tie-wraps.)
I originally ran panniers on my bike camping trips. But for bikepacking organized long distance rides, I found the racks and panniers to just be too heavy, and shifted to lightweight dry-bags.
For running dry-bags on the lower sides, you need to be able to stably mount side cradles, (Like Topeak, or Aliexpress equivalent.) or have parallel side rails that let a dry-bag sit into the opening between the side rails. (When the custom rack builders start fitting their version of dry-bags they fit only their racks, this adds weight and cost.)
This spring, I ended up fabricating my own carbon fiber rack system. I was able to knock of almost 9 oz from my last customize rack, and this new rack is actually very rigid and has held up fantastic on my last 2 multi-day back country rides with lots of gnarly singletrack. - Carbon Materials cost me about $50 from Aliexpress, including the tRump tariffs, plus some milled aluminum parts using material I already had.)
- I put in close to 30 hours in research/design, and probably 10 to 12 hours machining parts and epoxying it together.
- I sewed up a nice waterproof flat bag that fits all my tool and electronics support items, and this mounts onto the base of the rack. (About 2 pounds weight.)
- I run 2 side 12L 3-oz dry-bags on the side with 8 to 10 pounds in each bag
- I mount my sleeping bag in its 10L dry-bag along with my sleep kit on top of the rack/tool-bag. This weighs about 4 to 5 pounds.
- Big Agnes Tent is mounted on a cradle in front below the handlebars
(I don't want to post pictures, because my approach is a new blend of existing concepts and construction that I don't want the public to see on the internet.) For now.
Note: Bikepacking.com has a 2025 review of the latest bikepacking racks.
If you have slogged through what I wrote above....
I believe that manufactures in China do not believe this to be a lucrative market. All of my research has indicated that Bikepacking events, bike camping on back roads and gravel/singletrack is a very small market with lots of customization. Looking at what has been for sale on via Aliexpress are racks that will sell in higher volumes to urban riders, and traditional asphalt based tours with traditional panniers.
I am willing to bet that in China there are custom small volume rack manufactures that are selling racks similar to Tailfin / Ortlieb, they are just to small to try to sell internationally.
