DropBarFan

Short local ride for groceries, 22° F/-5° C; the prongs on the pannier buckles all snap when trying to fasten. Unbelievable since Ortlieb stuff is pricey & in their home country of Germany that temp is common in winter. Even worse, apparently the buckles are sewn-in. Panniers are about 5 yrs old but lightly-used & carefully stored.

Doug64

I'm not sure that I've had mine out in that cold of weather, just slightly below freezing this year.

I'll bet Ortlieb will cover that failure with a repair or replacement.

elcruxio

I haven't had that experience. Maybe you have a bad batch

Bicycle365

I concur, I use my Ortliebs as general luggage often without issue. That includes holding all of my ski clothes and accessories in the bed of my pickup for months at a time (under tonneau cover) and are use in temps MUCH lower than that. Sounds like a bad batch of plastic buckles to me, they will warrantee repair those I'm sure.

indyfabz

I agree with the others. Probably a bad batch. Ortlieb is not infallible. One of the compression straps on one of my BikePackers came detached the first day I used it "in the field." Wayne from The Touring Store said it was bad stitching. The pannier was warrantied.

gerryl

There is something wrong there, that isn't even close to being cold. I don't have Ortlieb anything, however I've seen people use their stuff as low as -25C. I would bet that even if their 5 year warranty ran out they would do something for you.

mdilthey

Didn't some guy use Ortliebs for a tour in Alaska during winter?

Tourist in MSN

If you mean the buckles on the straps, those should be the same buckles that everybody uses for straps for backpacks, etc.

fietsbob

Billions of National Molding Fastex buckles are used in the Out door gear Industry..

robert schlatte

Yes, I have broken several of the male parts of the buckles. It is a recurring problem Ortlieb should address. Fortunately, the sewn-in female parts don't break and all you need to replace is the male part. I recently bought 10 replacement buckles off Amazon for $10.95. The ones you want are 1" Duraflex Stealth Plastic Buckles. They work perfectly. [h=1][/h]

pdlamb

I suspect the 5 year old panniers may be more significant to the breakage than the 22F temperatures. Two of mine broke at about 8 years, nearly at the same time. In between, they'd seen 14F multiple times, nearly daily commuting, and a cross country tour. The replacement has survived 7F once, so far.

Bicycle365

So a .01% defect rate would mean the defective ones number in the hundreds of thousands. Your point was?

djb

I've had clips break before, but from being shut in car doors more than once. I suspect yours had little cracks in them already frombeing being stepped on or whatever.
I bought replacement bits at an outdoor store and replaced them myself. These are the same clips used on all my knapsacks, backpacks, camera bags etc and in my experience, they have to be compromised to break.
If you are able to use the frustrating search thing on this forum, you may find my posts about how to put new ones on and my technique where I didn't unstitched the webbing.

fietsbob

They are very widely used ..

If a Lot of cold sub zeroC use, the leather strap and Metal Buckle Canvas Carradice may Be better ..

DropBarFan

Thanks for all the replies! Another item for the winter maintenance list, I'll have to see if I still have the receipt.

djb

If you end up doing it yourself, if you are not able to find what i wrote a bunch of years ago, get back to me and I'll go over it again.
I did end up changing both male and female parts as I couldn't find the matching male part, but sets were about 50 cents each.
Hacksaw is what I used.

robert schlatte

I know exactly what the OP is describing. I use panniers for daily commute. I have broken at least three buckles. The prongs break on their own without being compromised as you suggest. Ortlieb should use sturdier buckles, perhaps metal. Regardless, as I said before, exact replacement buckles can be obtained from Ortlieb or much cheaper on the internet as I stated previously.

fietsbob

If Out of warrantee Time .. There is a repair Buckle ..

you cut the damaged one and feed the 2 sides of the replacement in the still sewn strap end.

there is a gap to do that, in the center of the bar the strap loops around..

djb

again, I can only speak of my experience, my first set of Ortliebs probably went 10-15 years before breaking buckles BUT, and its a big BUT, I know the buckles got stepped on, shut in car doors, doors at our house, a whole bunch of times, so the breakage came from being scrunched, not from usual use.
My latest newer pairs of Ortliebs have been fine over the last 3 or 4 years, despite being used commuting down to below freezing, and I also have never had buckles break on knapsacks and whatnot before, without any significant impact or crushing experiences.

I can't speak for the buckles in question here, only offer my long term experience.

If you do make the repair on your own, take an original off to compare teh width when you go to a good outdoor store to get brand name, well made replacement buckles used on knapsacks etc, Also, not all types have the same "mating" system, so theres a good chance you'll have to change both. Buy more than you need in case you make a mistake, again, they cost a buck or something, so good to have some extras in a drawer somewhere.

LeeG

I have broken two in cold weather from improperly jamming the pronged part into the female part with one hand, a prong was outboard of the female clip so jamming it in broke it off.

Having used Fastek buckles for decades I was surprised what a doofus maneuver I did twice.

djb

that certainly makes sense, and I have noticed that depending on the buckle, the male prong parts can vary a lot in toughness from one buckle to another--and I have a lot of things with buckles, and have used buckled things like photo equipment in a commercial sense for decades, ie, regular use and not babied.

Doesnt make any sense to me to "cheap out" on the prong parts of a buckle, the weight savings would be miniscule and totally offset by breakages......

all this makes me want to compare the buckles on my stuff now...actually take a look and compare them all.

LeeG

For the most part I think they work as designed and some are more robust than others in breaking strength but I've never seen any fail except after abuse or applications that they are not ideally suited for as in hatch closures for sea kayaks. I've seen some plastic fittings like sliders fail in higher stress applications after many years of summer exposure and some kayak deck fittings fail due to poor plastic in a batch. I'll be more careful now that I have two to repair. I think I just got lazy a couple times.

DropBarFan

Neat, should save some money on seamstress work.

& thanks to posters for the additional replies.

djb

oh, I think all of us do stuff like that once in a while. I know I have.

dropbar, the trick I figured out to avoid unstitching the webbing was to hacksaw a diagonal cut, angled cut thru the plastic, and was able to feed the webbing through this angled cut. Being angled, the webbing wouldnt "bend" outwards from the pulling motion--mind you, I didnt go to a boot shoe repair place to get a quote on unstitching and restitching the webbing, so maybe its rather cheap, and probably would be a stronger fix. This was on my really old pair, bought in 93 or 94, so the fix was good enough for me, and to be frank, the fact that my son and wife use these panniers more than me lately, shows my fix must be reasonably strong as the two of them are kind of hacks when it comes to forcing/not being careful with stuff, so if the new clips have stayed on, it must be good.

robert schlatte

If you just broke the prongs do you even need to replace the female part that is sewn in? If not, buy these replacement buckles: 1" Duraflex Stealth Plastic Buckles. Like I said earlier they are the exact buckles. Use the male part and throw the other part in a drawer for later possible use.