Craven W Rack

Craven W Rack fitted to 1961 Norton Dominator.

In anticipation of hopefully being able to take the Norton across the channel later this season I picked up a second hand Craven W Rack from eBay and then got in touch with the helpful chaps at Draganfly Motorcycles to get a fitting kit for my '61 Dominator. Draganfly have been the owners of the Craven Equipment brand since 2007.

The redux Craven kit is very similar to the original Ken Craven products but with slight changes and improvements to incorporate modern production techniques. The W Rack has an additional flat slotted mounting rail along the underside that initially I was not a fan of on the basis of visual appearance but in terms of practicality and fitting it is a boon.

New Craven racks and mountings come with the bonus that they can be ordered in stainless steel. They are nicely made but as with most modern stainless products some of the edges on the flat plate parts are quite severe and benefit from getting a light file or emery paper out before fitting.

I chose to get the mounting kit that gives the option of panniers: these ones have a bracket going down to the pillion footrest mount for extra stability and to take the weight of loaded panniers. The mounting kit listed for Slimline Featherbeds is aimed at the Atlas model, I had to cut a couple of inches off the long mount down to the pillion rests. I rather expect minor adaptations in fitting parts like these to old bikes and in many ways was happy to have the ability to tailor the mounts to my bike as I wanted the pannier mount and the rear mount to the mudguard stay to be matched in anngle to give a slightly more graceful look.

Now that I'm fully set up all that remains is to find an event that is happening, book a ferry and hit the road...

I tried to get the angle on these two brackets matching.

And the full view.

Carrying a pair of old swagman panniers. I'm going to look
out for a set of original Craven Dolomites in cream.