Roy: +1 for Rob's general comments about loading. It does boil down to personal preference. We've had several lively discussions re: trail, load placement, etc., with no clear consensus. But it keeps us thinking.
To your question, my answer is an un-qualified "Yes". I've tried an old fashioned handlebar bag what mounts to the stem. This places the top of the bag roughly at handlebar height. On my Atlantis, this set up was unacceptably floppy & squirrely, and I'm not fussy about these things. Acorn's Boxy Rando is roughly the same size and mounts on a small Nitto (M-12?) front rack. The overall weight of the 2 bags with mounting is roughly the same BUT the weight is a couple of inches lower. Even with the Acorn stuffed full of food, jacket, etc., effect on handling is minimal. The Acorn may sit closer to steerer tube as well, now that I think about it. So yes, lower & further back is better, in my experience. Note the Atlantis is a high trail bike so YMMV. dougP On Feb 23, 11:42 am, rperks <perks....@gmail.com> wrote: > in General handling should be improved by keeping the load/mass lower > and above the axel. This largely falls into the personal preferance > range though. The loads I carry in the front: > Panasonic GF1 > Spare Tube > Wallet > Phone > Keys > Extra water on a big day > this keeps the load weight pretty low, all things relative. I tend to > carry too much food, water tools, and god knows what if I am leaving > for more than a couple of hours. I had my Carradice Nelson LF on the > back for a while, and with both bags loaded the handnilg was > acceptable, but in the back of my mind I knew I had too much stuff I > would never use. I used to belive that suble position changes of the > load could not change haanling in a noticable way, in this case it did > though. > > Load position and amound can and has been be disussed for eons, what > is optimum for you boils down to personal experience. Popular theory > would have Grant's designs primarily as rear loaders, but baskets seam > to work as well as smaller front loads. I have hauled 45lbs of teff > flour home balanced on the handlebars of my crosscheck(high trail > geometry) for a couple of miles, far from optimum but I survived, and > it was way faster than walking. For me Optimum seems to be less than > 8 lbs or so on the front of a high trail bike, with any additional > load on the rear. I have not yet had a low trail bike to ride. Any > time I put more than 30 lbs up high in the front the forks go wobbily > before I have to worry about general handling. > > Rob > > On Feb 22, 5:03 pm, Roy Yates <roydya...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > It sounds like you're saying that for a front bag, lower is always better? > > Is that right? > > > Does that mean a not-too-tall bag that mounts just on a (mini?) front rack > > is better than the similar size bag that also uses a decaleur or just uses a > > handlebar mount? > > > Thanks, > > ...Roy > > > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
