Originally Posted by
Shinkers
Thank you all for the replies. I can totally get behind doing the cheapest thing first to start out, but I'll need to figure out what that actually is. I guess my first move is to try and see what heel clearance would be like on my Trek. If it looks like I could clear panniers, then that will make things a bit easier to decide. I've read that using a 4 point rack with P-clamps is better than a 3 point rack like the Tubus Fly. Would you guys agree with this?
Staying under 20 lbs should be easily doable since I'm not really worried about taking much other than a sleeping bag and some cold food on top of some emergency things. Water will be relatively accessible along the way, and I normally ride with two one-liter bottles.
I'm excited to get going.
Edit: Here's what I'm looking at for heel clearance.
I do this kind of touring on a Gunnar Crosshairs which is a cyclocross frame with around 43cm chain stays. Using the Tubus Fly or the Tubus Airy (I have both), heel strikes were a problem with my 44.5 EU size shoes and a 58cm frame. When I went to the Tailfin rack, which rides better and the panniers that are specifically built to fit more racing oriented frame geometries (i.e. road bike vs touring geometries), these problems went away and there is plenty of heel clearance.
It took a lot of fooling around with the rack extra foot piece that Tubus sells and then adjusting panniers to their far back positions. That tended to make the weight ride farther aft than I would have wanted. The problem is the positioning angle of most standard panniers are built for touring frames that typically have very long wheelbases compared to more road geometries. This is where the Tailfin set up, besides being half the weight of a Tubus Airy (amazingly light 350g vs ~700g) wins because it's also set up for road geometries. The panniers have the mounting clips mounted at angles that make heel strike highly unlikely unless you have freakishly large feet AND keep the weight closer overt rear axle where it belongs.
We rode this set up down the Rallarvegen in Norway through an essentially 30 mile rock garden on 30c tires so, needless to say, it was a pretty rough test of the whole setup. This was part of about a 200 mile long tour over 8 days on everything from road to this gravel trail that should have really been an MTB trip. Not one issue and everything worked very well. I would say that the bikes rode very much like they would on the road without a rack. Very stable, no sway even when climbing out of the saddle, no rattles - just a great product.