Originally Posted by
Indigo82
Thanks for the input.
Here are the photos:
1) Panniers moved closest to the pedals on top bar
2) Panniers moved away from the pedals as far as possible on top bar
...
Can you please suggest should I keep panniers located like in photo 1) close to pedals or in photo 2) away from pedals? The difference is 1 inch only I guess but does it make any difference in handling. Thank you.
Option 1 as shown in the photo looks like the aft-most pannier hook could slide off the rear of the rack and possibly fall off. Option 2 looks better.
The key here is when you hit a bump, the panniers might shift their rack position, and I have seen panniers completely come off a bike when someone hits a good bump, I almost ran over one of my touring partner's panniers once when it flew off his bike. And his pannier was big enough that if I hit it, I would have crashed.
Most of my rack and pannier combinations have something that will prevent the position of the pannier on the rack from moving fore or aft, perhaps a bump on the rack or perhaps I adjusted the hook position on my pannier (Ortlieb and Carradry pannier hooks have adjustable positions) so that the pannier can't move fore or aft.