| I met a gentleman at Interbike this year who was interested in our bike seat more for the load-bearing capacity than the ability to provide an extra seat for a passenger. He stored the batteries for his ebike in a Topeak bag on an MTX bike rack; the problem was the weight of the batteries would bend the rack after only two or three rides, so he was going through bike racks almost once per month! I knew that our bike seat frame was more than strong enough to support the load of the batteries, but I needed to make some modifications to make it work for him as a cargo rack. |  |
First, I needed to remove the seat cushion and the stash-box from the top of the bike seat frame. Once those were removed, I used a rivet tool to affix the lock directly to the frame (since it feeds through the stash-box for our bike seats).
 | Next steps were to figure out a way to securely mount his existing Topeak bag to the top of the bike seat frame (aka. Companion Cargo Rack). I decided to make a custom base-plate for the bag that would fasten to the cargo rack, locking in place using the existing lock. After putting together some design sketches, I picked up some supplies at the local hardware store and voila! I had a base plate that locked in place using the existing lock, and was more than strong enough to carry the load of the frame.
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| He ultimately ordered four Companion Cargo Racks and wanted a second cargo back base plate made since he has two ebikes that were both having the same problems with the Topeak racks. So I made the modifications to a couple more bike seats and his cargo racks were just about ready. The final step - installing the rack onto his ebike. |  |
I had to come up with a modified seat-post mount, since his seat had two seat posts rather than one. But taking advantage of most of the existing components, I was able to come up with a solution that worked great!
 |  | All in all it was a really fun project. I got to take apart our bike seats and become intimately familiar with the assembly of the bike seats (which I probably should have done years ago). |
And the best part is, we have the makings of a new product line for Companion Bike Seats now: the Companion Cargo Rack! Being that our frames were load-tested at over 4,000 lbs, this is the beefiest bike rack on the market! Stay tuned for more on when we release our new cargo racks!
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