Touring - chainstay length for tour bikes??????? please help

hi all,

planning to get panniers for my bike but not sure if i will have enough heel clearance..i have a rockhopper MTB and my chainstay length is 42.6cm. whats the average tour bike chainstay length??
thanks all

A touring bike will ideally have chainstays over 18 inches (46 cm) long. Yours are almost exactly 17 inches. As long as you don't have big feet or really huge panniers, you could probably make it work. The chainstays on my bike are about that long, and by mounting my panniers at the back end of the rack, I have plenty of clearance. Still, it's good to know ahead of time. Could you find an LBS that will let you try a set of panniers, just to see if it will work? I wasn't able to do that, and even though it worked out fine, it would have been nice to know ahead of time. Even if you can't, and your order panniers that turn out to not fit, there are still options available, like buying an extended rack to mount them on.

hi grolby,

unfortunately i dont have a chance to try out the panniers..i live in japan and am looking at buying arkel t-42 or XM-48 (maybe even gt-54). they dont sell them here so i will have to order them..also i have disc brakes so i cant use jandd as i have heard that they have longer racks for situations like this.. looking at old man mountain racks for disc and am a bit worried about spending money just to find out it doesnt work with my bike....
what panniers are you using??

You really won't know until you put them on and take it for a spin. I'd guess most are designed with 440mm in mind, but 426mm isn't too bad. It also depends on how they fit on your rack, if they're rack-mounted.

Make sure your panniers have a heel cutout, not a square profile.