Rob_A
Pack Dog
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2008
- Messages
- 349
- Reaction score
- 3
- Bike
- Suzuki DR650
My previous bike was a F650. When I bought it had those plastic BMW panniers which promptly fell off on my first trip spewing baked beans, rice and all sorts of other consumables all over the countryside - much to the amusement of my mate. BMW this….and BMW that! I decided to replace them but pretty soon changed my mind – new aluminum ones were a third of what I paid for the bike. Try as I might I just cannot understand where they come up with the prices, which at the end of the day, is just for two aluminum boxes.
Anyway I decided to make my own. I bought two 2m X 1m (3mm thick) aluminum sheets, one of those cheap hacksaws on a stand that can cut angles accurately, a couple of lengths of aluminum angle iron (3.06mm thick) and a new AEG barrel type jigsaw. As someone once said, no job is worth doing unless you can acquire a new cool tool in the process. They took a good few weekends to fabricate but it was a very rewarding project. I could have made them any size but preferred to keep them smaller (actually to just take a 5l jerry can of fuel & one of water, snugly). Initially I tapped the holes and screwed them together with stainless steel allen cap screws – that really looked nice. For some or other reason I then changed these to those closed waterproof aluminum rivets. Probably because of the opportunity of buying another cool tool – namely a pneumatic riveting machine. For those of you have never used one before, you have no idea what you are missing! The screws did not protrude as far into the interior of the boxes as the rivets did. At the end of the day they turned out extremely robust and light. Much stronger than any other commercially available panniers that I have seen. Oh yes, I used the original steel brackets for the boxes. Only downside is that you cannot remove the panniers as I permanently bolted them to the bike. One way around this would be buy a removable mounting system from one of the suppliers. For some strange reason the mounting systems are actually a lot cheaper than the boxes themselves.
Someone is bound to ask – are they waterproof? To be honest I do not actually know. One way to ensure that they are is to put a thin strip of Sikafex (that magic stuff they use on yachts) on all the angle iron strips when you assemble them. Another option is to anodize them if ones’s heart so desires.
Okay, enough rambling. Here are a couple of photos. As you can probably see I cut the vertical angles a bit short and they do not go all the way to the lid. On the second pannier I rectified this and it looks much better. Anyway, that was my attempt at doing something. IMHO pelican boxes really look crap but that is probably the way I would go in the future if I ever wanted panniers again – which I don’t!
Anyway I decided to make my own. I bought two 2m X 1m (3mm thick) aluminum sheets, one of those cheap hacksaws on a stand that can cut angles accurately, a couple of lengths of aluminum angle iron (3.06mm thick) and a new AEG barrel type jigsaw. As someone once said, no job is worth doing unless you can acquire a new cool tool in the process. They took a good few weekends to fabricate but it was a very rewarding project. I could have made them any size but preferred to keep them smaller (actually to just take a 5l jerry can of fuel & one of water, snugly). Initially I tapped the holes and screwed them together with stainless steel allen cap screws – that really looked nice. For some or other reason I then changed these to those closed waterproof aluminum rivets. Probably because of the opportunity of buying another cool tool – namely a pneumatic riveting machine. For those of you have never used one before, you have no idea what you are missing! The screws did not protrude as far into the interior of the boxes as the rivets did. At the end of the day they turned out extremely robust and light. Much stronger than any other commercially available panniers that I have seen. Oh yes, I used the original steel brackets for the boxes. Only downside is that you cannot remove the panniers as I permanently bolted them to the bike. One way around this would be buy a removable mounting system from one of the suppliers. For some strange reason the mounting systems are actually a lot cheaper than the boxes themselves.
Someone is bound to ask – are they waterproof? To be honest I do not actually know. One way to ensure that they are is to put a thin strip of Sikafex (that magic stuff they use on yachts) on all the angle iron strips when you assemble them. Another option is to anodize them if ones’s heart so desires.
Okay, enough rambling. Here are a couple of photos. As you can probably see I cut the vertical angles a bit short and they do not go all the way to the lid. On the second pannier I rectified this and it looks much better. Anyway, that was my attempt at doing something. IMHO pelican boxes really look crap but that is probably the way I would go in the future if I ever wanted panniers again – which I don’t!
