Troul 

x2. I'm not feelin so bad now lol

Ogsarg

I decided to order the Lezyne Road Caddy and Silca Mattone and keep whichever one I like best. Both seem to have the lowest profile and should hold everything I need. The deciding factor will probably be how easy they are to take on/off and how well they fit everything. Thanks for all the suggestions.

rm -rf

Those both look good.

When you try them: Can either one be unzipped enough to pull out some cash without having to remove the bag from the saddle?

rm -rf

My Pearl Izumi small saddle bag is probably 15 years old now. Long since discontinued, of course. I hadn't found anything that I liked to replace it. I'm kind of surprised it's still working okay after all these years.
No velcro on this rear wrap strap, which could detach if it's badly designed. The plastic clamp works great.

Repairs / mods:
Any velcro around the seatpost will fray my bike shorts. So, a long time ago, I cut the sewing and moved the seat strap to be vertical, hand sewing it. The seatpost has a slightly loose o-ring that this vecro fits around. I like it, but it can come loose on big bumps with the velcro getting older -- but that's a minor annoyance.

I glued the strap end clip so that it stays in place now--nice.
I replaced the frayed zipper pull loops a few years ago.
I recently sewed near the strap attachment at the top of the bag-- the threads had broken and the bag seam was starting to come apart.

The bag. Dollar bill for scale.


~~~

My "multitool", and separate cash wrap.

The hex L wrenches are in a square of "rubber membrane roofing", a thin, extremely sturdy rubber for flat roofs. A few slices of old inner tube for the rubber bands.
I like this: I have full size L wrenches, and they don't rattle. I used to also carry a tiny flat screwdriver in here, but never used it. It's a lot lighter and smaller than the folding multitools.
I have the rolled dollar bill in the wrench wrap for a tire boot, but now I have the spare tube wrapped in a piece of Tyvek event ride number (or a tyvek envelope would work). That's a bigger boot, and protects the tube too.

The cash is wrapped on a piece of foam, with a few dimes in a slot in the foam. I like it.



~~~
In the bag: spare tube. CO2 and tiny inflator. Two tire levers. A couple of hand wipes. The tool wrap and the cash wrap. There's room near the zipper end for my car remote fob.

Ogsarg

Both bags showed up this afternoon so had a chance to try packing them. Wow. They are really small. I tried the Road Caddy first and was just barely able to get everything in there and the amount of force it took to get the zipper all the way closed was more than I was comfortable with.

The Silca Mattone looks about the same inside lenght and width but is noticeably deeper and that allowed me to get everything in there without worrying about blowing out the zipper. It is easy to put on/off the bike except the groove that accepts the boa cable is rubber and the cable has to be forced under the rubber lip making it finicky to get into the groove. Once in the groove, it tightens up nicely. I'm hoping I'll find a trick to that but if not, it's not coming off very often I hope.

BTW, I got a KOM tubeless repair kit. Similar to the lezyne but narrower and lighter. I don't think I could have gotten the Lezyne to fit inside the bag.

Almost forgot. Someone asked if anything could be accessed without removing the bag and I would say no.

chaadster

Yeah, the Boa cable on the Mattone is a bit fussy to get back into the strap groove, but as I said before, I don’t go in the bag but rarely for emergency situations, and even then don’t have to take it off every go-in either. I keep my multi-tool in the the pocket of the Mattone’s lid part, and can slide that out and back in without renoving the bag. It would have made more sense for access ergonomics, I think, for Silca to have flipped the top/bottom orientation so the larger bin part was on the bottom when the bag is mounted so that one could get in there without need to remove the bag.

I do like the materials quality on Mattone; it cleans up quickly and nicely.

Koyote

Over-engineered complexity for its own sake… You would never have that problem with Velcro or with a Voile strap. I have plenty of saddlebags with both attachment types, and they just pop right back on the saddle in a couple seconds.

seypat

After reading through the thread, I'm thinking about something that would sit on top of the BB, possibly attaching to the bottom of the bottle cages. Or maybe something that sits on top of the rear brake bridge.

CrowSeph

i have this and it's pretty cool
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/Ha0df32f4...1200&hash=2400
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/Ha58ffa0f...1200&hash=2400

is called burrito bag but do not really resemble a burrito..
you can find for cheap on aliex

Badger6

Get a small accessory pouch like the ones that Silca or Rapha sell, and stuff your flat kit in there, and then carry it in a jersey pocket. The pouches I'm referencing can easily carry a butyl tube (but one of the TPU type tubes, like Tubolito or Schwlabe Aerothan work better), a lever, and a compact inflator/CO2 cartridge.

Trsnrtr

Does your pocket sag very much. I’ve tried it using one tube, two carts, one inflator, dinky multi tool, and two levers and tough I got a lot of “pulling.”

Trsnrtr

Ive got one on my Colnago.

datlas 

I use middle pocket and have not had any sag/stretch issues.

Trsnrtr

I think that my problem is that I’m short, 170 cm, and my jerseys tend to be long for my torso because I buy them big for my belly.

Anyway, my shorter jerseys seem to work better if I jam the pockets with weight.

seypat

I keep the multi tool and flat related stuff in a small saddle bag. The other stuff goes in a small dry bag in the middle pocket.

PeteHski

I was a bit disappointed with my Mattone. The biggest issue is that it's not remotely waterproof (everything gets soaked inside) and I find the zip very sticky, especially after a wet ride with plenty of road grime. I had to pull on the zip so hard I expected it to break, but to be fair at least it didn't! I also find the Boa a bit fiddly to hook the wire, but not a big deal.
Don't think I'll buy another.

chaadster

Oh really? I’m surprised; although I don’t go into mine often at all, as I said, I do ride in the rain and hose the bike down to clean, but have never noticed the contents to be wet. The zipper looks like a dry zip system as well, and the bag material is obviously plasticized, so yeah, I’m very surprised to hear that you find it “not even remotely waterproof.” I do use a rear fender, so perhaps that’s to do with it…?

Koyote

If you rarely open the bag, it is not surprising that you have never noticed that the contents are wet.

PeteHski

This review below also picked up on the water-proofing (or lack of). As mentioned in the review, it appears to be the lid material that isn't water proof, which is a shame because this is the part that takes the direct spray. I might look into mounting it upside down as suggested in the review, but fortunately I don't often ride in the wet. But apart from this disappointing issue it's a nice bag and the boa really makes it easy to pack tight under the saddle.

On second thoughts the exposed zip is also a major issue. As I mentioned before, once it gets covered in road grime it's virtally impossible to open. I'm pretty sure it was close to breaking last time this happened and I had to clean it thoroughly and lubricate the zip to make it work again. This was after a 160 km wet summer road ride. Not even a hardcore use case. What it needs to avoid this is a flap to cover the zip. I might even put the whole thing in a plastic bag next time!

So it's fair to say I can't recommend this bag based on my experience. Not with these two critical flaws.

https://road.cc/content/review/silca...at-pack-277633

"The other issue was the 'water-resistant' claim. There's no official standard for this, but a reasonable person might expect the Mattone to keep the contents dry even when exposed to spray from the back wheel, given this is where it has to spend its working life. The inclusion of a YKK waterproof zip also raises your hopes. In practice, a 50-mile ride over wet roads resulted in a soggy interior that took 24 hours to dry out."

"The reason, it seems to me, is that while the main compartment is rubberised on the outside, the lid isn't. Since it's the lid that's pointing at the back wheel, it takes the brunt of the spray. Silca shows the pack mounted the same way up that we've done it in our pictures, but wouldn't it be better the other way up? This would also solve the problem of the contents falling out when the pack is opened while still on the saddle."

chaadster

Ah…I did go take a look at it and had forgotten the bottomside lid part is not the same rubberized material as the upper case, so since I usually run with a fender when it’s wet or rainy, that goes a long way to explain why I’ve never experienced the soaked contents or gritchy zipper issues.

As review you quoted notes, it does seem like a silly design shortcoming, especially since the lid is both padded and lined, which makes me think the inclusion of a waterproof barrier would have been simple to do without needing to mess up the aesthetics of the bag. Also, since Silca note in the description of their multitools that “corrosion is the #1 killer of multitools,” you’d think they be smarter about their bag design since that’s where most multitools live

I’ve been using Mattone for about 2 years, so I guess I can’t say the lack of waterproofness or vulnerable zipper are critical shortcomings for me, but they are definitely shortcomings, and caveats which buyers should be aware of. Thanks for bringing them to my attention.

PeteHski

No worries. I think this is a rare failure for Silca. You would have thought waterproofing was a basic requirement of an exposed saddle bag.

Koyote

I dunno. The chaadster once waxed eloquently about his Silca phone wallet's beautiful and ingenious design, and then explained how he had to modify it in order for it to work as intended. And my new Silca Gravelero pump has a rather obvious design flaw that, while not terminal, is a bit irritating in such an expensive mini-pump.