Well, the R&D saga continues with yet another revision to the seat bag design. I’ve lost count of the pattern and concept revisions. This time I took the huge seat bag pattern and trimmed a little off the nose area, then added gripper fabric to the velcro. A few little other tweaks finished it out. The initial impression – after a 3 mile singletrack night ride and a photo op this morning, is that this is the best one yet. Holds more stuff than the others, doesn’t wiggle quite as much, and fits a thudbuster post. I still tapped the seat bag on the tire on one bump though, so clearance is a little more limited than on the smaller bags, but it still fits on my Fisticommuter over the OMM Sherpa rack.
It is made with Dimension Polyant VX21 fabric, tough gripper fabric under the seat rails and around the seat post, a 1/8″ plastic framesheet, really fat thread, and a bit of reflective tape so the bag doesn’t get ruined by some inattentive motorist.
One of these days I’ll get some packing peanuts and figure out volume on the little bag pattern and this pattern…… but right now, I have stuffed in there, an old Golite Coal polarguard jacket, a fleece vest, a homemade Primaloft vest, long underwear bottoms, homemade windcoat and windpants, and maybe a Golite Virga rain shell.
But, I’ll need to ship this one out soon and refrain from riding it more, as it will probably end up riding a whole lot of dirt soon.
Another full kit to crank out this weekend, then a casual hiking overnighter with some good friends in this area. Hopefully it will actually remain casual (none of the pictured talus ridge action) as my tendonitis likes rough hiking worse than biking….. but it is time to gently test out the hiking legs again.
And, here’s what we’re working on at the day job:
does that seat bag have an internal frame to hold it in position like that? Or is it all fabric? It seems like the buckles are strategically placed to hold the end up the the seat.