I was pretty psyched when I bought a used Saddlesack bag from a fellow poster here last weekend. My partner was not. She thinks I spend too much of my very little money on bike stuff--for the record, she's right--and besides that, we live in Oakland. So perhaps understandably she responded to my boyish excitement with a look that said, "you *know* that's way too f-ing fancy and it's *going* to get stolen." I retorted that I planned to attach it to my bike with a piece of bike chain and a crap load of zip ties, but still she was unfazed. Those things would not stop a thief. As much as I hated to admit it she was right. That's when I decided to the opposite tack: make the bag super *easy* to detach and carry. I know that Riv sells a Nitto-made doohickey for just such a purpose, but come on, $100? That's almost as much as I paid for the friggin bag.
Anyhow, that's how I ended up making this thing: <https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-pz2jSRSID5M/VCdBEfiAUWI/AAAAAAAAB5E/Sch1951fkR4/s1600/IMG_5445.jpg> For the record, yes, I blatantly copied the Nitto design as much as possible, and took some cues from another DIYer who had made the same kind of thing and posted it on Flickr. I couldn't figure out the attachment mechanism of the Nitto mount from the photos on the Riv site, so I just made a back plate and sandwiched the saddle rails between it and the main plate that you see in the photo. Seems to work well enough so far. The body of the mount I made from aluminum flat bar, so I'm sure it's not as durable as the Nitto one, which I assume is steel, but how strong does this thing need to be? The tube that the QR skewer goes through is just 1/2-inch PVC but I decided to wrap it in bar tape to avoid the toilet paper dispenser look. I made this in a few hours with no power tools except an ancient Black&Decker drill and if you don't count the cost of the drill bits and tap (which I wanted to have anyway), the whole mount cost me about $15 to make. Most of that was the cost of the aluminum flat bar, of which I have plenty leftover for other projects. (I already had the QR skewer from I don't know where.) Anyway, it was a fun project, not just about saving a little dough. More photos on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/37784914@N02/sets/72157647694465480/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
