• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Designed my own saddle bags

A

alanB

Husqvarna
A Class
i Guys

Just thought I would give some feedback on a saddlebag I designed for my 610.

P1010824_sm.jpg


I've never liked luggage frames on the bike for some obscure reason. Apart from the extra weight, I just think it looks crap, plus they always end up breaking.

So I wanted a bag that I could strap straight onto the bike without the need for additional frames or racks.

There are available bags, but apart from being too expensive for my budget, they had various problems which didn't make it worthwhile trying to save up for them.

I also needed something that would carry the stuff I needed for a few days away, such as tent, sleeping bag, clothes, food etc.

But having bought a relatively light bike that handles well, I didn't want to turn it into a lumbering pig on a trip. So I chose my kit carefully with low weight and small packed size in mind (if you spend some time on the ultralight hiking websites there are a lot of good ideas etc to be found). I needed a bag that would carry all of that only. I purposefully didn't want any space because then you start taking more than you need and end up with a pig regardless.

Anyway, I made up a few sketches of what I wanted and finally had a couple of prototypes made by a professional motorcycle apparel manufacturer.

The results worked very well. Ive tested the final version quite extensively (about 4000km of trips so far) and it meets my needs perfectly (which it should seeing as I designed it to do that :thumbsup:).

Here are a few photo's of various trips away

P1010833_sm.jpg


P1010811_sm.jpg


mybike_sm.jpg


smP1010903.jpg


smP1010921.jpg



It straps onto the bike at 4 points using 25mm webbing and cambuckles that are attached to the bag. I had to make up anchor points because the bike didnt have any where I needed it. I used the clamps around the frame that where used to mount passenger footpegs (I've taken those off my bike as I never use them).

At the back I made up webbing loops that are attached to the bolts under the rear mudguard. I thread the rear anchor straps through those loops. This works well.

Any comments or thoughts are welcome.
 
Nice.
Wish you luck with the project. Used to live in Joeys, about a hundred years ago!
I'd definitely consider these, if I wanted to do longer trips. I think you address a valid concern.

Where did you get the monster tank, BTW?
 
JonDirt said:
Looks good.

Any pics of what you manage to fit into that pack? Does it keep things dry?
Click to expand...

I typically carry the following in it:
Tent
Sleeping bag
Cook set (with cup, gas canister, washing up stuff inside)
Clothes (depending on the length of the trip, most so far -long pants, 4 shirts, 4 jocks, 4 MX socks, one normal socks)
Inflatable pillow
Inflatable mattress
Food - Pasta, tuna sachets, milk sachets, coffee, breakfast cereal, isotonic powder
Hiking Towel
Shoes
Gas stove
Ziplock bags (small and large one packet of each).
Plastic plate
Pair of shoes (with thin soles so they squash flat)

Typical packed weight - 9.5kg

The fabric has a water column of greater than 1000mm so it wont let water through, but like any other stitched bag the seams are not water proof - if need be they can be sealed with seam sealer I suppose. I haven't bothered. I've ridden through river crossings where there is water spraying everywhere and through lots of dust and mud without the contents getting wet or dusty or muddy.

But if you think about it, hiking bags are not waterproof, but people hike all the time in all sorts of weather. I keep my sleeping bag and clothes in thick plastic bags, inside the bag just in case. But so far have never had evidence of water inside the bag.
 
NoMad410 said:
Nice.
Wish you luck with the project. Used to live in Joeys, about a hundred years ago!
I'd definitely consider these, if I wanted to do longer trips. I think you address a valid concern.

Where did you get the monster tank, BTW?
Click to expand...

Hmm Joburg in 1913, must have been a very different place :cool:

The tank is from Safari, makes the bike look ugly, but its nice not worrying about fuel.
 
PS there's a ride report on the Wilddog forum in which I discuss the stuff I normally take and the bag.
 
I don't suppose you have dimensions do you? I like what you've done here. It looks like it would hold my small tent, therm-a-rest, sleeping bag (down, packs small), cook stuff, clothes, spares/tools. Small chair, and maybe the tent poles I could strap to the outside. If I had the rough dims, I could confirm it before pulling the trigger.
 
Nice effort. Looks a lot like the Giant Loop concept. Also if your going to advertise here you should be an advertiser.
 
Motosportz said:
Nice effort. Looks a lot like the Giant Loop concept. Also if your going to advertise here you should be an advertiser.
Click to expand...

I never really intended this to an advert, more just some feedback about something specific to the 610.

Apologies. How does one become an advertiser?
 
To get back to the original point of my original post.

The reason why I designed the bag in the first place was to enable multi-day trips away on the bike, without losing the characteristics that make the 610 such a nice bike to ride.

I think this is a fundamental point - one that is maybe at odds with the popular "Long Way Round" image many people have of adventure biking - which needs a huge heavy bike packed up like a truck with all sorts of stuff often weighing a quarter of a ton or more!

I specifically DIDN"T want to adopt that approach. To me I'd rather go by car, if that was the case! I can think of nothing worse than trying to ride a huge pig of a bike that just wants to fall over all the time and will need a crane to get it upright if it does go over!

So to me the objective was lowest weight and packed size.

Its actually not difficult to achieve if you just adopt a hiker's mindset, instead of thinking you have a packhorse which you can load up to the gills.

I'm sure many here agree, but in general this is not the mindset where I come from!
 
Motosportz said:
Contact one of the site people and they can let you know the options. I'm not trying to be an ass but you posted production and a link so I'm guessing you want so sell some. People pay to advertise on forums, thats how it works and keeps the forums running.

http://www.cafehusky.com/pages/chsponsors/

Thanks.
Click to expand...


Ok will look into it. Right now I'm more interested in comment and opinions from other people that ride the same bike.
 
Looks good but as has been stated you need to be a sponsor if you are going to post links in order to sell things so I edited your original post.
 
WickedWill said:
Nice bag.
I prefer the weight down low.
How do you find the handling of the bike with it all up top?
Click to expand...

I don't notice any real difference to be honest.

The first time I tested it, I was really careful at first, looking for any signs of instability on tar at higher speeds, as well as on dirt. But never felt anything at all. Very soon I had completely forgotten about the bag. I was riding my normal weekend route which is mostly slightly technical jeep track.

I do notice some difference in handling when I fill my tank up full, but have not yet noticed any handling issues around the bag.

I think its because it sits very close behind me on the bike, so perhaps I use my own weight to compensate automatically? Also as I said, I don't carry a heavy load in the bag, about 10kg's max so far.
 
bushwa said:
I don't suppose you have dimensions do you? I like what you've done here. It looks like it would hold my small tent, therm-a-rest, sleeping bag (down, packs small), cook stuff, clothes, spares/tools. Small chair, and maybe the tent poles I could strap to the outside. If I had the rough dims, I could confirm it before pulling the trigger.
Click to expand...

I sent you a personal message with the dimensions, hope you got it.
 
I did, thanks. Dims are a little short on the width, but as the therm-a-rest is soft, and the bag is soft, pretty sure I can stuff it in there. Otherwise, I can put it in it's own stuff sack and strap to the back. I have to add a rack to carry extra fuel for some trips anyway.
 
bushwa said:
I did, thanks. Dims are a little short on the width, but as the therm-a-rest is soft, and the bag is soft, pretty sure I can stuff it in there. Otherwise, I can put it in it's own stuff sack and strap to the back. I have to add a rack to carry extra fuel for some trips anyway.
Click to expand...

I use a Klymit Static V mattress. It's extremely comfortable and folds up to the size of a large beer can
 
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