Originally Posted by
ronzorini
Niles, any pics of your front set-up would be much appreciated! Seems very creative!
I was wondering if having the front panniers that low causes any clearance problems. No scraping on the bottom of your panniers in off-road conditions?
If I get some pics, I'll post.
Clearance: Yes, occasionally there is a problem, but not often.
There is a sort of balancing act -- too low = too many problems [like collisions with obstacles (rocks, curbs, vegetation, sides of hills or ruts, etc.)], and too high = worse handling (esp. when there is a lot of weight in the panniers).
Or, from the other side: lower = better handling; higher = better clearance.
***
What I have found is that a lot depends on where you ride. If you are mainly on pavement and obstacle-free dirt and gravel roads and trails, you can go pretty low without problems.
***
I have [or have had (so far)] a very low tolerance for scraping the panniers during turns. Lowriders have resulted in this problem at times, and it really bugged me. [I suppose I was imagining that it was destroying the nylon, scraping it like that; so every time I heard it, it was like fingernails on blackboards, coupled with feeling that I was losing some tissue from the treasured panniers, which were almost like part of me -- part of me that I should be protecting and preserving and taking care of (after a while, the bike starts to seem like an extension of your body, and you instinctively avoid scraping it like that...).]
Also, I didn't like the noises themselves; I found them very distracting; and I would complain to myself about the designs.... -- all of which is really unnecessary.
Still, I like to have
just enough clearance so that it is rare to hear that ('dreadful,' but only out of habits of thought and perception...) scraping sound.
So, the way my setup is now, it's just right: low but not too low. It's very rare for the panniers to scrape during turns. And the clearance is fine for the vast majority of obstacles.
[Though I have worn through the layer of nylon alongside the lower outside edges of these low rear panniers, which are low enough to have scraped a lot of vegetation (and some rocks and other things as well), which gradually makes the material thinner and thinner until holes open up -- but I found that it takes quite a while to wear through the material; it survives a lot of scraping, and it really only takes a few minutes to cut out some pieces of new replacement material, and then hand-sew it into place -- which then lasts for quite a while yet again, before needing more attention, at which time you just replace some more 'skin'....]
***
For an off-road tour that had a lot of higher obstacles and narrow passageways, and required better clearance, I would change the setup or use another bike.
99.999+% of the time, it's in a sweet spot, and just right where I have it now....