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It's a well known fact that dogs love going for trips. They're always wanting to go for a walk somewhere new, they'll leap at the chance to go for a drive in the car, hell, the internet is full of videos of skateboarding and surfing dogs!

This little project started with our desire to take our little doggie with us when we head out on our bikes. The original idea was to get a front basket on the bike. You can't really carry much more than 5kg on your handlebars, and the choices are more limited if you have a long handlebar stem like most folders. Klickfix has some good options, and the new Dahon luggage truss is genius in it's simplicity.

We decided instead to go for a rear-mounted system. Again the choices are a bit more limited for a 20" wheel bike (especially in Australia) and the range is not great to begin with. After seeing some poorly made and some ugly choices, we ended up getting an antique wooden crate, and went about investigating how to mount that on the rear of a Dahon. My conclusions were:

• Klickfix - although I like the Klickfix systems, their rack idea doesn't play well with panniers
• Pletcher - another of the better options, but I didn't like the mounting system too much.
• Basil - good availability, and excellent bags, but their rack mounting systems are poorly designed and don't offer a mounting plate. They have a dog basket with a lousy mount, it's super heavy and was rated "ugly" by the missus.
• Topeak - Workable system, but ugly. They don't have racks for 20" bikes, and I just have a bias against their products, I don't think they are good quality or good looking.
• Racktime - A spin-off of Tubus, meaning great quality and good looking racks. Works with regular panniers, they sell a clever range of attachments for their racks, and you can buy an adapter to make anything work with it. I think popularity of this system is set to boom with major players in the industry offering compatible products for it.

With the lack of stuff in Australia, I hunted around online and ended up ordering from the kind fellows at bike-x-perts.com. Europe has all the goods for commuting type gear, and Germany in particular. I purchased:

• a FoldIt, the 20" Fix version,
• 2 x SnapIt adapters,
• a ClampIt,
• and a SecureIt.

...and then began the waiting for my delivery to arrive. In the mean time, even my doggie seemed to get impatient to go for a pedal. We discovered together, that my Chrome Metropolis messenger bag is A-OK for doggie portage.

Anyway, yesterday, my exciting package finally arrived from Germany, time to get to work...

You will need a bike tool, or hex keys, and probably a hacksaw depending on your bike.

This is the Mu P8, with the Rackime FoldIt Fix 20" rack attached. As you can see, it's a handsome rack!

Foldability is not affected. It adds a bit of bulk over the wheel (as expected) but gives you a nice handle.

You will probably need to hacksaw the front stays to the appropriate length for your frame. The bolts for the front stays are hard to tighten, since they face the middle. My installation guide shows regular bolts, but mine were not. A right angle hex-key will be easiest (like you get with Ikea furniture) otherwise you might have to get them in place, take it apart and then tighten.

This is a SnapIt adapter clicked into the rack.

The adapter comes with a set of screws and large washers which could be used to affix a basket or bag very easily. The base of my box is 20mm thick, so I needed to get longer screws. It didn't seem as secure to run through the wood fixing into the base, so I instead pulled out these little rubber lugs, screwed through the mounting into the box. Not sure if this is the intended installation, but definitely stronger.

From here, I can now snap on my box for an instant Dahon cargo bike!

Woof!

The rack plays nice with panniers, and I think you could tour just fine with them. You may need to mount the bags as far back as possible to get heel clearance.

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Post-edit: The ClampIt would work well as a human-sized mouse trap. Getting it on is easy, getting it off... expect some very sore fingers!