I'm rethinking the pannier packing and weight distribution on my Americano. On my last tour my rear wheel (dishless DT Hugi 145mm disc hubs to 36x14ga spokes to Dyad hubs) came severely out of true and I got 4 flats in 3000 miles on 37-622 Marathon Supremes. My front wheel (identical except 100mm disc hubs) has never needed truing for nearly 20000 miles and get flats only when the tire finally crumbles from overuse. It's a no-brainer that I'm planning to go back to 37-622 Marathon XR's.

The June issue of Adventure Cyclist has an article titled "Where to Carry a Load", which really didn't answer the question it posed. Its conclusion was that a low front load adds stability if your bike is designed for it and that you should experiment to see which load distribution works for you. Thanks alot. Pretty useless.

I lowered the mounting hardware on one of my two pairs of Arkel T-42's so that they ride enough higher on my Tubus Tara front rack (33 lb capacity) that they don't scrape on sharp turns. Each weighs 14 lbs. In addition, I have a handlebar bag that weighs 6 lbs and I am thinking about a saddlepack (Caradice or Jandd) that packed will weigh about 9 lbs. I know that adds up to a lot of gear, but I am comfort rather than weight driven yada yada.

After using a scale to weigh my front and rear loads (with my bike and rack, clothed and shod me, my loaded panniers, and me holding in my arms the 9 lbs that I haven't yet decided how to contain yet) my front load is 113 lbs and my rear load is 125 lbs - for a rear to front weight distribution of 111%. Compare this to my last more conventional touring setup, with four T-42 rear panniers, (109 / 155 lbs) where the ratio was 142%. Yes, I have slimmed down some.

This change, made possible by the elimination of superfluous gear and an upgrade from a synthetic to a down bag has allowed me to also eliminate my rear rack and panniers (6.5 lbs) - albeit with the addition of a saddlepack (2 lbs).

My question is this. What is wrong with this new setup? Is the bike more likely to be unstable in descents? Will the front tire slip more easily in the rain? Do I have a greater chance of going endo when hitting a pothole? Will the weight on the front and the force from a front disc brake (203mm rotor opposed to a tandem cro-moly fork) cause the front wheel to pop out of the drop outs? Anything else to worry about?

I have used front panniers only for years on and off pavement with an equipment weight distribution front /rear of 60/40. The rear weight is carried on rack top in a dry bag stuffer. I have never weighed the distribution including the rider so I cannot speak to that in those terms.

Your front setup weight is too much when it includes a handlebar bag which I stopped using long ago due to the combined high position swing weight effect on steering. Options for removing the HB include mid frame bags and smaller top tube incidentals bags or shifting that weight to the rear saddlebag.

With your total equipment at 43# what would be the consumables weight for 4 days and where would this additional weight be placed? Such supplies could be needed on the GDR.

If I read your numbers correctly, moving 6# to the rear means 28# in panniers and 15# in the saddlebag. This still leaves weight up higher than I prefer towards the rear particularly with a long exposed seatpost on many bikes. [This may not be the case on your Americano.] My rear stuffer takes sleeping bag, pad and clothes- all higher volume but lighter equipment so having it on rack top is not a potential problem high above the center of gravity.

Raising the front pannier mounts was a good idea particularly for the GDR route conditions. I have no disc experience to add, but wheels do not tend to pop out of drop outs while under rider and equipment load unless nuts or QR are loose.

What is the widest tire that fits your Americano? If you can fit the 2.0 Marathon XR's I would do so for the GDR for your comfort and to reduce stress on the bike and wheels.

Try riding each configuration on the same terrain including non-pavement to test the feel for rider control as conditions change. This will be important for your proposed GDR ride. My setup worked very well on the GDR using 700x47 Marathon XR tires on 36 hole hubs and had no wheel problems although I am a significant clydesdale.

Good luck with your experimentation.

My Americano is for paved road touring, not the GDR. But the point of not having extra carrying capacity for consumables is a very good one even when riding near civilization. Also, the higher COG of the HB bag and saddle pack needs to be thought through.

With SKS P-50 full fenders, the widest tire I am comfortable with is 37-622. For even degraded chip seal roads nothing wider is really necessary. On my GDR-bound mountain bike I will run a 50-622 XR on he back and a 60-622 29er tire on the front.

there must have been an anomaly of some sorts for your dishless rear wheel to get severely out of true given the number of folks who ride with dished wheels that hold up fine,,albeit not as long as a front wheel.

+1 - ya that wheel should have been bomber. Unless the OP hit something helacious with it the wheel shouldn't have come out of true like that. I have a couple dishless rear wheels [IGHs] that I've abused on heavily loaded off paved road tours and neither has needed a lick of attention so far. Since the OP's bike is a paved road touring machine it shouldn't have any rear wheel issues at all with a properly built rear wheel.

Going 30 mph down the In-Ko-Pah grade towards Ocotillo I ran over one of those molded EPDM rubber straps with metal S hooks on both ends that hooked onto my rear wheel spokes, wrapped around my hub inside the rotor, and then hooked on to another spoke. In the process, one or both hooks actually sliced off the back end of my SKS Chromoplastic fender about 8 inches above the mudflap. I guess that could have been it.

It was so bad that I deleted the picture I took of the damage and threw away the fender before I got home so my wife wouldn't see it.

And then after I extricated the strap from the wheel and got started again, this time carefully examining road debris for those straps, I ran over a fist-sized rock that I just couldn't avoid without destailizing the bike and possibly crashing. That put a nice dent in the rim, but the tire bead stayed seated so I was able to do another 2500 miles on that wheel.

When I got home I couldn't true the wheel with consistent spoke tensions so I've since rebuilt the wheel with another Dyad rim. It's true now.

There is no problem carrying 14 pounds a side in the front end, with a bike built like a tank. Ideal weight distribution is 60% of load front, and 40% rear, though I have never got it that far forward myself, but you aren't pushing anything with your numbers.

If anything weight up front should make it less likely to throw the front wheel out of the fork, but if there is any possibility of that then you need to regard that as a separate issue. Presumably CM did it right, but there is one position in which the brake on disc acts as a pivot and pivots the wheel out of the ends, and another where it pivots it into the ends. Seem like it would be correct to have the disc placed ahead of the fork, but I could be wrong. My disc fork is to the rear.

When the disc is full on it is like establishing a new axial position, and if the wheel where free of the skewer it would rotate around the disc brake contact point and force the wheel into the drops when the brake is forward. Another option would be solid drops with a wheel with a removeable axle, which is a typical set-up on a lot of other vehicles. Asking the QR to be the hero in all this with wheel saving ends is a kludge.

"Thanks alot. Pretty useless."

I know, but that is just how it is. Front end geometry is critical to handling, and so the differences between bikes do mater. Then added to that, front end racks can carry weight all over the place. I built a rack a few years back that moved the bags a little to the rear of the normal position of centered over the axles. That made for great handling, but every rack is different, and will behave differently on bikes with different HT angle and trail.

The good news is that if you have standard 72-73 degree geometry up front, you will be riding geometry the racks are designed around, and you will likely find it easy to work out something for your bike.