Broken rack bar...normal?

[Bulwark]

heya all,

The bar that the rack (on the back of my bike that replaces the hand rail) broke.  When I bought the rack from Suzuki (an official part) the rack did say 10 lb limit.

Well, the rack broke on my road trip this summer (it only had my sons helmet in it and a tire repair kit).  Is it normal for the bar that the rack attatches to (under the seat) to break with minimal weight on it?  The dealership is telling me that my warranty (the bike is not even a year old yet) wont cover this.

let me know what you think as Ill be going in again with my bike on thursday.

Thx
Scott

[gsJack]

I put a small E33 Givi case on a Suzuki rack on the 02 GS and it began to bounce up and down when that frame member began to crack.  I added a couple aluminum angle braces to support it and it's been fine for years and tens of thousands of miles since with no further frame cracking.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v443/jcp8832/GiviRackPics.jpg

I made a rack for the 97 GS that mounted to the grab handle and only used soft luggage on it and it never failed in 80k miles.  It failed later when JP put a Givi case on it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v443/jcp8832/gsrackpics.jpg

[gsJack]

For anyone  wanting to mount a Givi type case on the GS500/F take a look at the SW-Motec rack.  It has a four point mounting that should not cause this problem.  Also Givi rack mounts differently.

http://www.twistedthrottle.com/trade/productview/238/210/

[PuddleJumper]

I made my own because of that issue with the factory rack.

Mine is a six point attachment and will hold my 175 lbs. with no problem.

Here's a link of a post about it if you are interested.

http://gstwins.com/gsboard/index.php?topic=37964.0