Tag Archives: Enduristan Monsoon panniers

Exactly how big is soft baggage?

Giant Loop Siskiyou Panniers – a close look

These panniers were sent to me for a quick look by Adv Spec

WHAT GIANT LOOP SAID AT THE TIME
… A ‘round-the-world contender, Giant Loop’s Siskiyou Panniers™ combine the convenience of hard panniers with all of Giant Loop’s performance advantages. Rugged, rackless, lightweight — and damn sexy…. Backed by a Limited Lifetime Warranty…

The GL website specs shown above left also claim each pannier has a volume of ’35 litres’. I’m not the first person to question how they arrived at this figure; my calcs put it at more like 24 litres. We’re all used to exaggerated claims, but that was quite a discrepancy. I read that they measure their luggage products by filling them with beans and doing so I suppose it’s possible that a soft fabric pannier would bulge out. In fact I’ve since found that that is exactly the case so Giant Loop’s estimate of 35 litres is right in the ball park.

GL are fairly ambiguous about what they’re made from other than ‘military-spec materials and construction‘, but it looks like the well-proven and widely used combination of a Cordura shell with a vinyl back, interior and lid. Unusually, sandwiched inside this thick shell is an unseen additional layer of closed cell foam, or something similar. It helps shape the bags and also reduce damage by padding the contents when you crash. GL wisely suggest that any hard-edged items in the baggage are well wrapped for such an eventuality: it’s standard practice in packing soft baggage.

Rather like the Monsoons, the top edge of the Siksiyou’s shell has a sewn-on sleeve of coated nylon with a thin zip and roll-up clips, similar to a dry bag. Inside you get a separate yellow nylon liner (below right) cut more or less to fit in the panniers, with well-taped seams, a thick layer of TPU coating on one side, plus another thin zip and roll-top clips. Over the top of this drops the thick PVC lid which clips down on straps, with additional separate straps for attaching stuff to the top of the lid rather than tucking it under the lid straps – another nice touch. Inside the lid is a flat zipped mesh map pocket.

There’s also a small cinch-cord pocket on the front of each pannier, but although they describe it as ‘bellowed’ it’s actually a simple wedge that’s nowhere near as big nor usefully box-shaped as the four pockets you get on Magadans although it’s said they’ve been designed to take 2-litre Touratech cans, as pictured left. On the right, a 1.5 litre water bottle in the pannier’s pocket.

The two bags join together using broad vinyl velcro pads. These pads feature additional lashing rings to secure other luggage or to fix it all to your bike. The Magadans use the same system, but with a pair of wide velcro straps rather than full-width pads which seems bit OTT. Me, I’d prefer buckles and straps over velcro anyway, because as the volume of your load changes or rough roads take their toll, fine tuning the tension may be required – and that’s much more easily done with adjustable buckles that super sticky velcro, be it strap or pad. On the Mags such a buckle mod is easy to do – with the Siskies you’re stuck with the pad which I’m also not sure would be great to sit on on a hot day. The GL installation page suggests: “For 2-up riding, affix a small seat cushion to the top of the Siskiyou Panniers“.

To stop the bags sliding back you get a strap to attach to the pillion footrest or thereabouts (left), as on the Monsoons but something that was missing from the Magadans’ first version. Subsequent versions low have a tie-off D-ring.

Included with the Siskiyou bags are a pair of alloy exhaust guards (rather like I bodged on my Suzuki – I got the idea from GL). You also get two hose clips, some instructions and a sticker and to stop your sidepanels getting scuffed GL can also supply some protective vinyl film. The exhaust guards are an admission that many a soft pannier has melted like a Cornetto when it shifted or otherwise got too close to the pipe. Modern efi bikes with catalysers run especially hot and indeed the Siskiyou panniers tested on a Husky Terra by Cycle World magazine (April 2013) melted. So like GL say, additional guards may be needed. On any bike you need to think carefully how loaded throwovers will react when they shift on rough roads against a hot pipe. This need avoid or deal with meltdowns with soft bags is why some riders understandably prefer hard alloy or firm resin boxes, although in my opinion mounting soft bags on some sort of rack is the way round this flaw.

The Siskiyous have a sporty cutback base which makes them more suitable for regular bikes with low, upswept pipes. Whatever, this shape will greatly increase the Siskiyou’s fitting options to many more bikes than the usual adv suspects. The GL logo is emblazoned on the sides, but in a pleasingly understated way. Unless that ‘GL’ logo glows, I’m not sure there any reflective surfaces as found on the Mags and Monsoons – possibly the thin edge of the lid?

I did also wonder if access would be a bit of a faff. If they’re fully locked down you unclip the two lid straps, unclip and unroll the outer bag and unzip it, then unclip and unroll the inner bag and unzip that – and you’re in! Of course you don’t need to use those zips; their protection against waterproofing is minimal and zips can jam or break when dirty or used carelessly. In this respect I prefer the bomb-proof, roll-top simplicity of the Magadans and the Monsoons.

So all up you’re getting a good sized touring pannier that looks well made and is usefully featured. The foam protection sandwich is a nice touch, as is including exhaust guards and several lashing points on under and behind the bags; you get a feeling they took a lead from Enduristan here. But – is this £475 ($700) worth of pannier when in the UK Magadans go for £350 and Monsoons for just £230? I wondered that perhaps if you’re paying for the ‘limited lifetime warranty‘ but that only covers the “original purchaser… against … defective materials and craftsmanship only, and does not include damage due to normal wear and tear or misuse“, so no big deal there; after a year they could just put any failure down to wear or misuse.

sisky — Siskiyous look like they were designed for on a Honda CB550X Rally Raid

The Siskiyou panniers certainly feel like they’re up to the rigours of overland travel and design and features fit the bill without any radical innovation. You just need to ask yourself in turn whether the bill for a set lives up to your expectations.

Motorcycle Luggage Racks

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Originally written 2012, overhauled 2020
There are 24 pages on luggage and racks in AMH8
See also MYO racks on this sticky HUBB thread

The problem with off the shelf pannier racks like the classic ‘racktangle’, above left and right, is that they:

• may not make them for your bike
• may cost more than you’d like
• are too wide
• are often too far back

Those are some of the reasons I made my own rack for my first travel bike, an XT 500 (below), way back in 1982. It was rubbish but it did the job.

On the next couple of trips I used no rack. People do manage – usually on smaller bikes with lighter loads – but for overland travel, classic, strap-over throwovers are a throwback to a twin-shock era. The problem is usually with the high pipe of a trail bike. The bag presses on the panel which melts and – on a hot day on the south side of the Sahara (below) – the plastic catches fire soon followed by the ex-army canvas panniers and your favourite pyjamas.

What is wanted is a rear rack that attaches to the subframe and other key points as low, forward and close to the bike as possible so the mass follows suit, while allowing for those instinctive corrective dabs when losing control, as well as paddling in soft terrain.

I first saw a ventura rack in the early 1990s on the Tanami Track in northern Australia (left) and was so staggered that dirt touring bikes (admittedly, possibly two-up?) could be loaded like this that that I put a picture in the first AMHandbook and nearly every edition since. Ventura’s idea is that you can reverse the upright bar to point forward to load your sack forward to improve ‘weight distribution’. Tell me about it.

In a nutshell the mass wants to be as close to the bike’s supposed centre of gravity as possible which, with a load and rider aboard, is in the region of the injectors (right).
‘Mass centralisation’ became a buzz word with Honda bike design a few years ago, and was a concept applied by bike makers like Buell.

It makes sense, especially on a loaded motorcycle traversing less than perfect roads. The more central the mass the more predictably the overland-loaded machine responds to the forces of its own inertia as the suspension moves the sprung weight up and down over rough terrain. That adds up to better control, no freaky handling vagaries like tank-slappers, smoother riding and so less fatigue. All up, the key to surviving a long day on the road in the AM Zone.
Above left: mass decentralisation. Think of the leverage!

Platform racks

As mentioned, when it came to making a rack for my XT500, the idea was fairly obvious: make platforms (left).
Even though I’d been despatching for a few years with throwovers or more commonly just a big top box, when it came to carrying a big load to the desert, a low platform down on the sides made intuitive sense.

The execution using Dexion shelving was poor, although that slack-rack did carry the load to the desert and back – albeit with a radically reduced once I came to my senses. It probably survived because there was so much jelly-like flex it was unable to summon up the tension to snap outright. The mld steel ‘L’ platform element was bolted onto a Craven rack – the ‘Jesse Luggage’ of its day, with plywood planks screwed on and sharp corners trimmed

Platform racks have been around for years, among other places used on army BSAs in the 50s and 60s (left). I’ve always liked the principle but these tinny, hinged trays were designed to take a specific panniers or to swivel up out of the way when not in use. It’s a logical and effective form of support. Within limits you can securely load anything on there; box, bag, sickly calf, bulging sack, except the sliding support arms get in the way of bigger loads.

Same goes for the solid (unhinging) version, left (notice the nifty mini inner platforms too). A secure placement for alloy boxes which would need next to nothing to stay in place.
I had similar racks made for the Sahara, but using soft bags (below), but you can’t help worrying about that hard front edge on your lower legs. This never occurred to me until Desert Riders when we added big metal boxes to remind us how they might hurt.

Full-width shelf rack; perceived risk of shin snapping when off road

When using a rigid container like an alloy box there’s no need to have a full-width shelf; an inch-wide ledge will support a metal box, as it did on our Desert Riders XRL racks (below). The welding was superb but that rack was over-built, slapping metal over metal in search of strength but actually blinding the function by adding excessive weight. We did carry very heavy loads at times (left), but two of the XRLs cracked their subframes.

The reason platforms are not used these days is that sticking out looks inelegant, injury inducing and damage-prone in a fall. But when overlanding, your gear is on there all the time and so a fixed platform rack is no different from the angular edge of an ally box, except when it comes to removing baggage and wheeling a bike indoors overnight.
Below, Sean F’s very neat fixed platform rack addressing some of the issues for his soft-bagged DR650. if you get platform racks, this would be an idea to copy.

I still like the idea a platform rack with a hinged element so as to carry anything that fits while being slim when unloaded. The problem is without using the BSA sliding struts requires some sort of unsupported platform or cantilever. As always, you need to visualise how it will respond to slides down the road or hours of corrugations with maximum loads

There are various ways of arranging this cantilever, but the only one I’ve seen was on these Chinese 125s (left) pictured in Angola. If you look closely you’ll see the pivoting platform swings out to rest on a shallow ‘L’ bar. Providing it’s chunky enough, the leverage on the pivot and load on the bar ought to be met. A wider ‘L’ rest bar means less stress but you don’t want the fixed part being too wide.

A search on Google Images most probably identified that ‘Angolan’ rack (right) as one produced by none other than The Chongqing Meihuan Machine Manufacturing Company.
With a closer look you can see the pivot/support works by lowering on a spring to rest horizontally on the pillion footplate. Note the sub-racklets at the back, too.

And here is another hinged plat-rack made for this lightweight utility bike by former Italian custom bike maker, Borile. Like the Angolan rack, it’s a bit on the wide side for overlanding duties rather than transporting your goods to market, but the principle is the same.

There loads more on racks and baggage in the book.

GS500R Overlander – progress report

GS500R Index page

The GS500R Overlander project bike is taking shape, although it’s not quite a fully set jelly. The critical mod: adapting the rear DR650 hub and brake to fit the donor bike’s swing arm and chain run has been completed pretty seamlessly by Matt and his team of farmyard engineers (see pic below).

I know what you’re thinking: why does the front tyre look fatter than the back – is it the camera angle? No, it’s just that at the time I didn’t want to waste money on new 19-inch tyres in case the GS turned into what the French would call, un piège de mort. So I bought used cheapies just to get the thing rolling, first for the front, and a while later another for the back which was not identical. Just as well really, as following my recent Morocco trip I’ve discovered that Heidenau K60s are the ‘bomb’, as the bloke on the right would say.

Half-built impressions of half-baked bike
It took a bit of firing up off Matt’s V8 Landrover offroader to get the GS running while whipping out a plug to dry and blowtorch. Even then the GS didn’t seem to run well. Was there a badger nest in the air filter? I could barely pull up the track to the road, and while slipping the clutch mistakenly thought it was because the gearing was way off. As with most things on this build, we took an educated guess here, but at 42/16 the gearing’s actually turned out to be in or around the ball park.

Running down to the village to top up on fuel I thought, jeez, this 500 really is a lot slower than the BMW FGS650 twin I’ve been riding lately. Of course that bike has got at least twice the horsepower and 20 years of development on the G. Heading back, the weight of that extra tenner of unleaded in the tank saw the bike struggle to escape the dale. Something was not right. I pulled over and pulled off the left plug cap – no difference. A ha! as the bloke on the right would say. A little bit of fiddling with the plug cap got past more cobwebs, the second barrel fired up like a Saturn V and suddenly the GS500 was running like… a GS500.

I tore off up the lane like a teenager on his first moped, awestruck at the feeling of raw power. Like Ogri’s beaky-nosed mate Malcolm (left) I was heading for a prang, so it was time to consider braking. The DR650 front end’s disc had been binding a bit as the pads off one scrapped DR got to know the disc rotor from another. A quick check at the fill up proved that the rotor wasn’t getting hot and causing the lame performance. In fact, yanking the lever did see the forks dip hard in response so it can get there if it has to. I guess it’s just not the quality of braking I’d got used to while running the 2012 BMW. The back brake was considerably slacker, partly we suspect because the DR650 calliper which had to be used to clear the Talon spokes, may not compliment the bore of the GS’s master cylinder. So the back brake is mushy and with a long throw. Maybe a bleed or a braided hose will bring it round, or a master cylinder off a DR.

Another problem. The main stand had to be extended by several inches (right) and it now takes an extreme heave to get the bike up; not something I could see myself being able to do with baggage at the and of a tough day on the road. The feet are now clearly too far back from the pivot point for the factory-set leverage. And yet it’s as long as it needs to be, lifting the back a couple of inches off the deck, like a normal stand. Curved stand feet could get round this.

But in fact when I think about it, the GS is a bit too high; I can’t get my feet flat on the ground. With the new suspension and the 19s it’s probably jumped up at least four inches judging by at the extended stand. I really appreciated the BMs low height on the dirt in Morocco and am not looking for masses of clearance on the GS-R. In fact this will be easy to modify: slide the forks up the clamps and back the shock off max preload where it is set now (left). Didn’t get a chance to do all that, as it was a flying visit to the Mattlabs.

Steering feels a bit slow too, but I think the height may have something to do with that. As it is I don’t think the steering of a regular GS500 would get a job in a bread slicing factory. Getting used to the bike and modulating suspension levels may fix all that, and anyway there are new tyres to come. The dirt bars too felt a bit narrow for my liking, or no wider than stock and maybe could do with a lift. Again, easily done.
It’s hard to tell if a thinner back tyre greatly affected the steering or ride, not having ridden a bike with back-to-front tyres before. My plan is to run identical-sized tyres front and back. One thing’s for sure, the seat feels great, although as mentioned earlier, the rear-set pegs could stitch the knees up on a long day – and that could be crippling. So maybe some sort of highway peg off the crash bars will work.
One good thing, even though it’s tall right now the GS feels pretty light for what it is and a good 20 kilos lighter than the BMW GS650 which was at least 200kg. Might try and weigh it one time.

What’s left to do
Once the above mods are seen to Matt the Mig or Andy the Arc are going to fabricate a rack, but not just another off-the-shelf, too-far-back, 18-mil loop jobbie like I used on Morocco on the BMW. Something as securely mounted, but with a hinged or somehow retractable platform plus a ‘sheep rack’ platform on the back – always handy. That way the pans can sit rather than hang – a much better arrangement for an overland load, IMHO.

I was going to fab’ some PVC pannier liners with a heat gun and roller, and a mate had offered to sew me up some Cordura outers. I would have kept the Monsoons I used in Morocco if only they had been my ‘Fibonnacci shape’: less wide, more long and bigger, but since writing this Adventure Spec have started selling a ‘Magadan bag‘ with input from Walter Colebatch and based on the Steel Pony Gascoyne he’s used in Russia and a bag whose dimensions I’ve admired myself, if not the canvas fabric. If all the hard work’s been I’m be happy to order me a pair.

One thing I was also thinking of is junking the fat OE pipe and fitting something like this (right). A cheap ‘one-size-fits-all’ mega can be bought of ebay for 30 quid but I’m not 17 anymore and couldn’t bear a loud pipe or unravelling all the jetting and valve-burning issues. It seems the GS muffler only weighs some 5 kilos anyway so if pannier space is so important why not just chop the regular pipe at the neck and drop the angle as in the gif below. It’ll be good to have the bags in close and the pipe underneath, and its an easy job, giving what, at least four inches more bag space. After my over-width Morocco experience and seeing how slim the GS is, it would be nice to keep it that way.

Anyway, I’m off to the Overland Expo in Arizona in a couple of weeks, a great chance to pick up some goodies in the US, including a pair of Tubliss liners (left) which enable you to run tyres tubelessly on spoked rims. As you may know, I tried doing that before without complete success.

I know Tubliss are said to be for off-road use only, but I’ve interpreted this to be an issue of legal liability on the pubic highway rather than anything to do function or real-world safety. Robin, with whom I rode in Morocco last month has run Tubliss on his TT250R all over the world for years (that’s him right with all his kit – including full camping gear).

A meekly powered GS500 with a modest payload isn’t going to tie the tyres in knots. I plan to fit the front 110/80B (59 T) K60 Scout (my review) I used on the BM in Morocco (left) and another new one for the back. The 100/90 57 H is a tempting 30% cheaper and still with a load index 230 kilos and a 130mph rating, neither of which the GS will see in its lifetime, but I’d need two so I’ll stick with the wider 110/80 at another 100 quid.

More news as it happens.