Seido Stage front rack review

Seido’s Stage front rack is a sturdy, large rack for carrying anything from your bikepacking equipment to a couple of pizzas. It’s easy to assemble and fit, although you do need mid-fork mounts for attaching it, and also depending on your fork, you might need to search for a longer bolt for the crown. 

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Seido Stage front rack – Technical details

2023 Seido Stage front rack top, by Suvi loponen

The Stage front rack is an aluminium rack, painted black. The dimensions of the rack platform are 246 x 332mm and the two struts attaching to the fork are 240mm long. 

The rack attaches to the front of the bike with those two struts that bolt onto your mid-blade fork mounts and, at the top, it’s secured to the fork crown. It comes disassembled, which means you need to attach the struts to the rack, and you get a whole bunch of bolts for attaching it to your fork, too. 

The max load for the rack is 8kg. Seido says the full system weighs 654g – an accurate value tested on our scale – although, depending on the bolts you use, this might vary by a few grams. 

Seido Stage front rack – Performance

2023 Seido Stage front rack with bag and lock, by Suvi loponen

There are not too many aspects I can asses when it comes to a front rack; they’re rather simple in both structure and purpose. I’ve been using the Stage rack mostly on my electric gravel bike and carried anything from my shopping to pizza to spare kit on it – and I have nothing negative to say about it. 

Fitting this rack does require mid-blade fork mounts, so if you don’t have those, you’ll need to opt for a different rack altogether. I luckily have them, so all I needed to do was assemble the rack, which I admit involved a few bolts, so it took some time. In essence, you need to connect the two struts to the main rack, and then attach the front crown to the rack. 

I had a little bit of trouble with the fork crown bolt that came with the rack, as it wasn’t quite long enough to slot through my fork. I had some spare ones, though, so I found one longer and fitted that on. Then came attaching the struts to the fork, which was super simple with the bolts. 

2023 Seido Stage front rack full rack view, by Suvi loponen

That’s pretty much all I had to do before I was ready to explore all the things I could attach to the rack. Front racks are often referred to as “pizza racks”, so I did try carrying pizzas on this with success. Even on some gravel paths and trails, the rack holds steady and doesn’t rattle. 

Of course, how well whatever you are carrying on the rack stays on it depends on how you secure the stuff. Old inner tubes work great, as do Voile straps. I used both depending on what I was carrying and with the 8kg weight limit, I could carry quite a lot. 

2023 Seido Stage front rack rear view, by Suvi loponen

Although I’ve not considered a front rack for a longer bikepacking adventure, I’ve come to enjoy using the Stage rack and the way it allows me to carry quite a lot at the front of my bike despite the limited handlebar-wheel space I have on my small bikes. Unlike with just a bar bag, I don’t have to worry about tyre rub, and with the generous platform, I could pack a couple of things side to side instead of stuffing everything into a small tube-shaped bag. 

Of course, the rack does add quite a bit of weight to the bike, which is a con if that’s something you care about. For cutting about town it’s not an issue, but if you are doing a lot of climbing, the extra 600g is quite a bit. And with the weight at the front, you need to make sure to balance it out with something at the back especially for off-road riding, to keep the overall weight distribution below what would start to affect the bike’s handling. 

Seido Stage front rack – Verdict

The Seido Stage front rack is an excellent front rack, and there is little to fault but if your bike doesn’t have mid-blade fork mounts this rack won’t work. If you do, it’s very easy to fit and stays attached very securely. The 8kg weight limit is also fairly generous and means you can haul a lot of stuff on this – whether in an urban or bikepacking setting. And on the latter, the Stage doesn’t take panniers so it is limited in that sense, too. 

Pelago Bicycles Front Rack (99€) can take 10kg of weight and is heavier than the Stage, but can take those front panniers. But then again, you could pair this with fork cages which would alleviate that issue… Then again, there are also very lightweight and quite universal racks available such as the JACK The Bike Rack, which Pat rated. Compared to the Stage, the benefit of that rack is that it can be easily removed when not needed. 

Overall, the Seido Stage front rack does exactly what it promises. It’s a great front rack that you can use for carrying lots of things in urban and off-road situations. 

• seido-components.com
• The reader’s guide to Off-Road.cc’s review scoring system

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