Originally Posted by
hadleman
Well, I did a bit of testing, and it seems that using only my panniers up front and a rack pack in the rear is the best mix between handling and keeping the weight down. That puts a little less than 20lbs up front and somewhere around 12lbs on my rear rack. By not using my rear Ortliebs I'm saving something like 5.5lbs.
Does that much weight seem reasonable for the front wheel to handle? I'm leaving on my tour tomorrow for a month, so if there's something horribly wrong here, let me know.
Thank you all.
By the way, I'm going from here (Oregon) over to Glacier and then down through Yellowstone if anyone cares to know, or is heading in the same direction.
sounds ideal to me. Of course you've totally left out details like what you're riding and what the wheels are but if it's a "touring bike" I think you've got a perfect combo. Lately I've been using a long bungie to hold the front pannier bags to the Tara low rider frame more securely so things in the panniers don't move around. I loop it at the bottom and stretch it over the bag and hook it on the cross piece.