Great Big Bags 2.0 – 138L (each) Panniers… Seriously?!

The Surly BFD Project Menu
Prologue
Episode 1: 138L (each) Panniers… Seriously?! (you are here)
Episode 2: Big Fat Dumb Wideloaders
Episode 3: Kickstand Kaos
Episode 4: Add a Flight Deck. And a Hangar
Episode 5: Leftovers
Episode 6: Electrification

When I put together my first set of Big and Cheap DIY Cargo Bike Bags, I thought two 77L panniers were huge! I fit them onto my Mongoose Envoy cargo bike project, and for several months they have been great, but not quite perfect. Not because of the capacity of the things. They were perfectly sized for that mid tail frame. But there were a few convenience issues … you’ll see below what my solutions were.

Why go bigger?

Well, I liked the Mongoose mid tail so much (it was my first dedicated cargo bike) I decided to jump all in and go for a full sized longtail with as much capacity as I could get my hands on. The Surly Big Fat Dummy was a bike I had *almost* bought before the Mongoose, and I decided with its fat tires, sheer size and very stiff frame it would offer the larger carry capacity and greater versatility I was after.

Going from a mid tail to a long tail meant I had more room for bigger bags. I could do the Rothco 77L canvas bags again, but after quite a bit of shopping around, I found Rothco’s larger, heavy-canvas 34″ long, square zipper’d duffel bag was dimensionally just about perfect to fit the BFD’s rear cargo area.

But, I am getting ahead of myself.

Parts List

$120.00 Rothco Jumbo Canvas Cargo Bag (qty 2)
   7.08 C.S. Osborne #5 5/8" hole Brass Grommets (qty 10)
  37.99 Cross Linked Polyethylene - 2lb, yellow 72"x48
  15.00 7/8" thick hardwood dowel (qty 2)
  11.95 12" soft cargo loops, 6 pak (qty 2)
   4.59 7/8" rubber chair feet 4 pak
  28.00 74" buckled 2" wide luggage strap 2 pak (qty 4)

Total Project Cost: About $225.00.
Result: 276L of pannier space. Two Hundred and Seventy Six Liters.

Notes on the Parts List

Foam
I am sure you can find something cheaper. I wanted bright yellow so I could see the contents of the bag easily. Cross linked polyethylene is essentially a thin version of gym mat material. Extremely fine-celled. I have used Foam Factory for some esoteric jobs in business for custom cut stuff and found they had what I was after. What you want here is a big single sheet of foam that wraps entirely around the bag interior. The large foam sheet specified here is just over double what you need. Cut it in half, shave a few inches off one side and its a perfect fit. As an alternative you might try a couple of the Therma Rest mattresses that I used in my original bags, and some gorilla tape.

Grommets
You can also use #6 grommets just like I did with the original Big And Cheap Bags. It all depends on what tools you have in your garage. If you have no grommeting tools whatsoever, this #5 size midget grommet kit will give you everything you need – the tool and plenty of grommets. Cost is about $56 and you will have plenty of grommets left over so you can hammer reinforced holes into more things.

The Wooden Dowels
You can go to Home Depot and pay about half what you will at Amazon. Thats what I did, and HD has a handy manual-cut station you can use to cut the rod down if you don’t have a saw (please buy a saw instead). I only put Amazon as a source so there is an online purchase choice.

The Luggage Straps, Part 1
I specified four 2-paks for a total of 8 straps. 4 per side. Generally you only need two. But when carrying really heavy items, like the pictured load below (still in the shopping cart) that weighed about 128 lbs (58 kilos) … you want more straps to help take the burden off of your wideloaders. So, you can buy fewer straps. Or you can buy the max that will fit and toss the spares into your cavernous panniers and forget about them until they are needed. Your choice.

The Luggage Straps, Part 2
Notice in the pic above, and in my previous Big Bag posts, I used 2″ and then 3″ wide velcro straps (a single 3″ above). these hold fine, but in daily use, velcro is… velcro. It is constantly sticking to things it decides to stick to, and generally making my life more difficult. The straps do indeed do their job, but first and foremost just finding 3″ wide straps long enough to work with these bags is very difficult (and a process I will not describe since I abandoned them). Also these 3″ extra-long unicorns are just too damned expensive. Kydex buckled straps unbuckle in an instant, don’t stick to themselves or anything else, fit 4 to a side which is plenty and cost less to boot. Lastly, the luggage straps I am specifying adjust from 40″ to 74″ which is perfect for folding the bags up, empty, and expanding them out when full. Since the excess strap length is captured via a sewn-on sleeve, nothing is ever flopping around.

Whats With The Dowels?

My original Big Bags used hooks, and I went to a fair amount of trouble to make sure they were absolutely planted and rattle-free. And they are all that. But still, I thought there has to be a better way, and I ended up coming up with one.

Using dowels and cargo loops for hanging the bag has major benefits over hooks:

• It doesn’t rattle
• It is light weight (lighter still if you use an alloy tube)
• It is cheap (less so if you go alloy)
• It distributes the load on the bags evenly across their entire length
• It holds them fully secure
• There are no points of excessive wear/rubbing.

And last but not least, they make bag removal and reattachment a snap. The process described in a nutshell:

STEP 1: Loop-tie five cargo loops per side to the Dummy rails, and loop those up thru the deck itself so they drape down. If you are not making bags for a Surly or Xtracycle-compatible cargo bike, use as many loops per side as you can, as well-spaced as you can make them.

Here is one of my early fitments when I was figuring this all out.

STEP 2: Create 5 grommet holes in the top inside edge of each bag. One on each top corner, and the remaining three positioned so they are roughly equally spaced down the side of your rack. the exact positions will vary depending on your rack. I illustrated the whole grommet-creation process in the original bag creation post. But worth noting for these bags I used smaller #5 grommets and I really prefer this smaller size.

STEP 3: Line up your now-holey bag with the dangly loops and, one at a time, put each loop into each corresponding bag hole. As you do this, thread your dowel thru the loop on the inside of the bag.

Here is what this looks like with no bag in the middle


Annnnnd with the bag:

STEP 4: Remember the rubber chair feet? Put one on each end of the wooden dowel. This keeps the bag from rubbing on a relatively sharp edge of cut wood. Sooner or later it will rub enough to wear thru the canvas. But not if you have a big soft round rubber bumper on that edge.

Note the above pics show a 1.25″ wooden dowel. I downsized to 7/8″ and its much easier to fit the loops thru when putting the bag back on. You can see the smaller version in the pics below. Original concern was the dowel bending, but there are so many cargo loops to suspend it… thats not going to happen.

Spend a few minutes with some fine-grit sandpaper to make the imperfect surface of your dowel silky smooth.

Bag Removal and Re-Attachment

Here it is in a few easy steps. I photographed my first bag removal as you see, and I timed the second with a stopwatch. It took 30 seconds to detach the bag and another 15 seconds to toss the straps in and zip the bag up.

You can forget about making something that fast and easy with hooks.

STEP 1: Unbuckle the two bag straps. Pull the top inside corners of the bag back so each end of the wooden dowel is visible.

STEP 2: Pull off the rubber foot from one side. I removed the rear one this time.
STEP 3: Pull the dowel out from the other side. Its only halfway out in the picture. It will slide out quickly and easily.

STEP 4: DONE. The bag is now free. It is now a big duffel bag with handles you can lug into the house with all its contents. Feel free to use the shoulder strap that came with it.

Did I Mention The Kangaroo Pouch?

Yes really. Just like the original bags, Big Bags 2.0 are typically folded up when empty. The foam liner inside means the folds are fairly thick and a pouch is created in the fold. For bags this big, its pretty deep, too. And almost three feet long. Check out how I almost disappear a 2 lb sledgehammer into it, standing on its end, below.

That makes for secure storage of most daily-use items. On a typical day, a small backpack with my work clothes, pouch with my keys and alarm remote and garage door opener, and another with my wallet and phone are all snuggled in one side or the other. Road bounces and vibrations don’t disturb them, and there is enough room left over that I don’t have to open the bags up at all unless I am on a shopping trip. So as big as these things are, if anything they handle small jobs just as well as the the large ones they were designed for.

I used to think the 77L bags were crazy big. I spent a lot of time agonizing over whether I was wasting time and money even attempting to go bigger with these duffel bags. Now, having had some time to live with them and on more than one occasion to stuff them full, I can’t imagine why I would want to go smaller.