I had the Givi on my Ducati and managed to lose one at speed on tarmac. Went back and picked it up, all working A1, came off like a space capsule and just a few scratches. For my DL650 i am thinking Givi or Carabou.

Hard bags allow one to carry a lot of gear. Perhaps more than we really need? So good in one way, as all your junk fits in. But bad in another way as the weight adds up quickly making the bike hard to manage off road.

In reading many RTW reports here and other forums I notice a very common problem seems to be with cracked or broken pannier frames. Guys end up building them up with more and more steel bracing until they must weigh 12 kgs. each!

Even Ted Simon jettisoned his hard panniers and top box after his Africa crash on his last big RTW ride. Went back to soft bags on his R80GS.

Ted's point about the false sense of security is very true. Most hard panniers are pretty easy to break into. And once they are tweaked a bit they leak. Most good soft panniers are waterproof or have rain covers.

Givi make some nice soft bags, as do Tourmaster and several others. I use clear, zippered plastic comforter bags to put my stuff in. (you get these when you buy bedding and such)

So what's the truth here? Do guys end up with hard panniers because of the stickers? You could always sew Flag cloth patches onto yer soffties, no?

Easily the quote of the day.

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Find out details of my 2011 trip to Siberia on a lightweight dirtbike:
www.brighton2expeditions.co.uk

I took metal mules with me to Africa. The left one on my AT was large enough to fit passengers in, much to the annoyance of hitchhikers that I passed en route.

Having spanked a load of cash on them (they were cheap then too!), and lovely to behold they most certainly are, I wept when I grazed the first one in a campsite fall on day1 in Morocco. I then dented it significantly on day2 when a policeman jumped out into the road and caused me to drop the bike. I could feel myself getting poorer by the day, and that was just the cumulative damage to these lovely shiny boxes. Burkina Faso ripped the first one off, Angola day2 the second one and finally Angola day3 I almost squashed it flat and had to hammer it back into shape.

The point is, anyone saying that they won't be taking them offroad is deluding themselves. If you ride a motorcycle all day everyday for 6months you WILL drop it and, in my case, the metal mules racks (or just racks in general) are the weak point.

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Find out details of my 2011 trip to Siberia on a lightweight dirtbike:
www.brighton2expeditions.co.uk

Cheers for the link Redboots, I had already checked the Steel Pony site out,the Andy Strapz one too,I must admit I am tempted by the Gascoyne bags from Steel Pony with maybe also the Simpson bags as tank panniers,I may be able to adapt the Suzuki pannier rack I already have on the bike to support these bags,would save me a FORTUNE too compared to Alu boxes.
I have no illusions about the bike being dropped,I know it will happen again (dropped it leaving an Orthodox monastery in east Poland last year but no panniers on at the time)
Keep the ideas coming,its great to get real life feedback from people who have been there & done it.

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Andy L

From the midnight sun to the silk & rhubarb roads, 2014
I am not an adventure rider, just a biker that has adventures.

I wanted alluminium panniers for a long time. They look great and I thought it was something you can buy once and then use it for the rest of your life.
I didn't bought them because they are expensive. I was just waiting for the moment were I really could not keep living without them...

I have done many kms with soft bags, but they don't look that cool, do they?


My opinion changed after travelling for some months through Indochina with some 25USD Vietnam-made soft panniers.
I liked them so much I sent them home after the trip.

Now it's time to adapt them a little bit, do a frame for my bike and also two waterproof inner bags that I can take to the hotel room while the panniers stay allways screwed to the bike.

Material is "truck-canvas" (Is that the correct name in english?), so pretty bombproof.

25USD the pair of bags:








long 35cm, wide 18,5cm, high 38cm. Some 25lts each. And leightweight.

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___________/)____/)___/)____/)/)___/)___/)________
"Cosas que escapan a los que sueñan solo de noche..."

They look PERFECT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd buy a pair of them in a second !

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Yep.
Look good for purpose, but would need a hole in the bottom to let water out reasonably quickly.

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Vitim Bridge Clubwww.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=533442
www.sibirskyextreme.com

I’ve used Jesse Luggage.
The rack and a few other details are crap but the boxes itself are pretty good.

With a custom-build rack and some other tweaks it looks like this (2-up mode):

im not sure how much my racks weigh exactly, about 5kg i imagine. i weighed my racks, boxes with 7liters of water in, and all of my camping gear, clothes and a load of other travelling things in a 89l ortileb roll bag, just before i left for a small trip through europe this year and it came in at 45kg, which i was more than happy with.
I understand what you say about the alloy ones bending or breaking in a crash but surely with soft ones then the contents gets wrecked in a crash?!

cheers
chris

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www.mainlyduesouth.com in support of the Colin McRae Vision

I have order from those guys atlaspanniers very good quality,good price for welding alouminium panniers no holes no bolts no nothing....

When i put them in my varadero i willpost some pics!!

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3mountainsadventure

As the title of this thread is specific about alloy panniers I'll keep to them. If you want the best get metal mules no questions. No other alloy pannier has the same build quality and design.

BMW and touratech alloy, made of soft aluminium and don't have over lapping lids, so when it drops it bends (read squashes) and then leaks.

Trax/sw motech same but even less robust

Jesses built like a tank but the mounting system flawed, perfect for cruising the highway but forget it you are going off road Forget it.

Stalkoffer not experienced but at least have overlapping lid from what I have seen, unsure of mounting system

Ardcases, tried my best to destroy one of these and failed, great value for money

Happy Trails, did what they say on the tin, survived 8 RTW with at least 1 crash and a few drops.

For anyone thinking of buying alu panniers first decide are the for highway use only, if so any will do, or will you be roughing it, gravel roads, potholes, boulders, bike drops, remember the mounting system is as important as the pannier, how precious will your cargo be? Do you want it strewn all over the road when the lid falls off or it collapses in a minor off. You probably won't mind if it leaks if only used at weekends or a week in the alps, might get a bit annoying on a RTW.

You pays your money and takes your choice.

I just bought my panniers from Atlas panniers...And i love them.





The best thing is that they fit in my GIVI bars (with no problem) so the cost stay low....

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3mountainsadventure

As you can see you don't need much of a workshop to fix them ,these are touratech and as I posted before they saved me and the bike.

I think Panniers are a personal choice, I have noticed a lot of brave people putting a lot of effort in to geting there opinion across as to which is best Soft or Hard, someone even mentioned a few people who use soft ones but I could name another 50 people who use hard cases. I personally use both but depends on where & what trip I am on, if I am on a relatively short one ie: 4 weeks or less I would use the soft ones, but any longer I prefer the hard panniers as I like to carry things on top of them like chairs & food etc. The biggest issue that I have seen on serious travel is not the panniers being hard or soft but the size of the bike ! At least 1/2 the people I come across have fallen prey to an image rather than reality, & really struggle with there bikes regardless of what panniers they have.
Cheers
Paul

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....rather Die Living.....than Live Dying !
www.globetrekkers.net.au