Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
The first time you try to stop with a bike that has 40 or 50 more pounds of weight on it, you will be surprised how the brakes did not work as well as you anticipated. But, all that means is that with a heavy bike you need to anticipate better.
On very rare occasion, you can get a sudden surprise shimmy on the bike at a higher speed. If that happens, you can often negate it by pressing a knee against the top tube. If you have never ridden that bike with a load before, it would be a good idea to try to press a knee against the top tube a couple times when you are coasting, so if your bike suddenly starts to shake, you know exactly what to do because you did it before.
First time with a load on the bike, put your panniers on the rear rack as far forward as you can without having a heel strike problem, do that because if the center of gravity on the rack is farther back than it needs to be, the bike can feel a bit unstable.
great tips.
another little thing to help how a bike handles and rides loaded with front and rear panniers, is to keep the weights more or less even side to side. If you can , don't overweight the back of the bike, as this puts extra strain on the rear wheel spokes, cuz your body mass is more at the rear also---AND it can make the bike squirrelly handling wise.
I can only speak for my Caravan, but my take is that coming from the Japanese, where people are slighter, its more suited to a light to medium load. Im a lightweight, so fit into the Japanese mold, but this is still a bike frame from the late 80s early 90s, and they werent generally as stiff as more modern frames. Unloaded the Caravan has a lovely flex to it, which makes for a really nice ride feel. Loaded it certainly does flex, and I never really knew any better back in the day, but noticed the difference after I started riding a tough aluminum mtb from the late 90s, and then about 10 years ago when I bought an aluminum cyclocross bike basically as a replacement for the Caravan tourer.
The cross bike was markedly more stiff and even allowed me to stand and pedal when fully loaded, which I tended not to do on the Caravan because of frame flex.
so if you can, try to keep the load to 40 or so pounds, but you'll see how it feels when you start doing some rides with panniers on it.
Do keep in mind to try out different weight placement try outs, front back etc, to see how it feels riding. My front rack back in the day was a rack typical of the day, aluminum blackburn low rider, and they werent overly stiff also, and my front panniers were really small, so maybe you'll have better racks already than what I had and this will help.
anyway, like tourist said, be cautious and observant at first, and it is really going to feel fricken weird first time fully loaded. You'll be at a snails pace, so just accept it for what it is, and you'll see that any small gradient will need so much more work from you, and shifting down into the small front ring, but thats what its for, so downshift downshift and downshift--your knees will be happier.