Tank Pannier Mounts
When Long Tall Sally from advrider came over to see how the Mt Sun tank panniers would fit on his R1200GS Adventure we noticed two things: 1) the strap that goes across the front might need an extension; and 2) it wouldn't be that hard to mount permanent attachment points to the GS that would eliminate the strap across the front and its slight interference with the lower A arm of the telelever front end.
Hmmmm, if that'd work for the Adventure model maybe it'll work on my standard GS. I threw the tank bags over the tank and took a look. Yep. But I need some items.
These match the Mt Sun stuff
Fabric Glue
Not all fastex type hardware is the same. Mt Sun uses 1” webbing and Stealth buckles. REI carries both. About $2 later (I didn't think it was possible to get out of REI that cheap) I had a pair of buckles that match the hardware that came with the Mt Sun Panniers and a couple of feet of webbing. The fabric glue was already in a garage cabinet.
Left side buckle
Right side buckle
I cut the webbing and used a mini-torch to seal the ends. After removing the tank I looped the webbing around a frame member and through the female portion of the buckle twice, using the fabric glue between the two layers of webbing. I hadn't cut and sealed the loop on the right side when I took these pictures. The clamps are to make sure that the fabric is held together as the glue sets.
Gluing the ends
Right side loop
A few hours later I trimmed the webbing from the right side and added more fabric glue to the very end of the loops to keep them from unraveling. I'll leave these clamps on over night. More tomorrow.
Saturday, Feb 28, 2009
Buckle location on frame
View of buckle under tank
The glue is dry and the clamps are off. I was describing the modification at breakfast this morning and someone asked “Why fabric glue?” The ansswer is simple: I'm lazy. It was faster for me to slobber some fabric glue on the webbing to fasten the buckles to the frame than to sit there with needle and thread and sew the loops together. Anyway, these pictures show where the buckles were added and a close-up of how the buckle sits under the tank. It should be fine. On the off chance that they rattle around against the tank I'll use some stick on velcro dots to keep them from moving.
Original front strap location
New front strap location
The first image shows how I used to mount the front strap. If I went over the A-arm suspension bumps would tighten the strap. It would also tend to migrate into the shock springs letting the bags work back toward my knees. Under the A-arm was slightly better, but not perfect.
With this modification the original strap wraps around the side panel and into the buckle I just added on the right side. The extra strap was cut so it wouldn't flop around in the wind. I used the cut off strap with the two male portions of the buckles to build the strap that goes between the female buckle I added on the left side of the frame and the female buckle on the tank pannier that the original mounting strap connected to.
Front straps
This is a bad photo of the front of the bike with the tank panniers mounted. No more strap under or over the Telelever A-arm. Both sides wrap up around the side pannel and tank to connect to the buckles connected to the frame.
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