Originally Posted by Six jours
One of the major problems with all of it, though, seems to be that few bikes are set up for low mount frant racks. My Heron Randonneur, though designed for a front rack -- they even come with a "custom" Nitto rack -- still doesn't carry it in the right place. The original bikes had racks so low that they were used as an attachment point for the front fenders. Mine -- and most of the other modern bikes I've seen -- includes several inches of space between the rack and the fender. This results in increased instability with a front bag, from what I understand. Hopefully folks with first-hand experience will chime in.
I really don't think those 2 inches are going to make much of a differences. I started out with my handlebar bag on the mount it came with, placing it about 3" infront of the centerline of the bars, and a little below centered with them. Loaded with a park toolkit, light jacket, leg warmers, half dozen cliff bars, spare tube and banana or two it really wasn't that bad, even at grindingly slow 20% grade and on 40 mph descents. As long as both your hands are on the bars at slow speeds it's alright.
Moving the bag off the plastic mount and onto the bars by the straps seemed to make a pretty good positive difference, now the top is about level with the bars and there's no space between handlebar and bags. I haven't tried it with the same amount of weight yet but will on a century tomorrow.
I'm also considering the barely. I think that and the 'bar bag will be plenty to carry anything I need on up to a 600k. It's just so damn expensive, maybe later in the summer I'll pick one up from saint john streets cycles (cheapest place I found).