Kieran: I went on a 5 day fully loaded tour on my orange 58cm Rambouillet back in September. It was the tenth annual fall tour I take every year with a few riding buddies. Had a Jandd hooped low rider rack held onto the stock fork blades with P-clamps. I used full sized rear panniers on each side of the rack and had 15-17lbs in each pannier. Also had a VO rack that held and supported my Sackville handlebar bag. Used an old Adam (Rivendell bag) in combo with a Bagman off my saddle and carried my tent in the bag. Used Gran Bois Cerf (28mm - but measure more like 30mm) tires with VO Fluted fenders.
I was very happy with the way the way the bike rode and with the weight low didn't get an annoying amount of wheel flop. Not tons of clearance between the tires and the fenders, but enough to get by. This was the first time I rode the Ramb for camping, much less with a front load. I've camped with other front load setups and very much prefer it to a rear load bias. I thought the Ramb rode great and will absolutely use the same set up for future tours. I weight about 160lbs. Like you, I've thought about having my Ramb modified with a different fork (a bit more trail, room for more tire, mid stay eyelets..), having the rear brake bridge raised, etc., but haven't gotten to it. For comparison, I rode a 57cm Nordavinden on the prior year's tour with the same set up (less tire b/c the Norda had even less clearance than the Ramb) and didn't care for it as much as the Ramb. The ride was too noodly, there wasn't enough tire width under me, and maybe it had too much(?) trail as the Norda's have a lot of fork offset (70mm?). Kai from Brooklyn is right. Side to side balance is what matters. I had a total of 40-45lbs of stuff on this years tour and had all but maybe 10lbs on the front end between the panniers and my h-bar bag. Hope this helps. Dick On Wednesday, December 28, 2016 at 4:24:49 PM UTC-5, Kieran J wrote: > Hi All, > > Hope everyone is having a nice holiday season! > > I'm curious about how the Rambouillet handles with different configs of a > front load. I've only ever really used a small Swift Bandito up on the > handlebar, but never anything more substantial. > > Have any Ram owners ever: > > - somehow run low-rider panniers on the stock fork? > - run low-rider panniers and an additional front bag on the stock fork? > - had success with an aftermarket fork with a different trail figure? > > Long story, I'm thinking of having a couple mods done to my Ram and new > powder done (the Creamsicle is cool, but doesn't match anything - > especially not all the red clothing I have). I would consider adding > mid-fork eyelets if running front low-riders appears to work well for the > bike. > > Thanks! > > Kieran > > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
