I've been working on making a better set of panniers for a while now, and I think my latest set is pretty good! Just as stable as my first one, but a lot simpler, and out of Xpac this time. I went and took them for a ride around town to show a friend. With 10 pounds of weight in each and trying to hit as many curbs as I could, they did a great job. The rack itself moves more relative to the bike than the panniers move to the rack.
The panniers are an attempt at finding a middle ground between full pannier setups and full bikepacking setups. They are relatively small (6-8 liters each), lightweight, and a good choice for singletrack when you just can't quite fit gear into a regular bikepacking setup. They are inspired by some bikepacking gear philosophy, in that I avoided rigid attachment points. Instead of metal hooks, the bags attach at the top with velcro, and then are held down to the rack by a series of compression straps. The bag itself is just Xpac (VX 42) sewn into a drybag with velcro on the back and webbing on the front to keep the compression straps from shifting. The bottom is reinforced with ballistic nylon on the exterior for abrasion resistance.
My last set of panniers had an external pad with holes in it to allow for straps. I was afraid that with padding inside the bag, they would be able to rotate too much. This time I decided to just go for it and made a sleeve for a 5x10" piece of closed cell foam, inside the bag. It seems to be plenty sturdy enough, and is way easier to deal with than what I did before. The other important change was to go from two pieces of webbing on the front to just one. Two pieces seemed like a good idea, but made it a PITA to adjust the strap - the buckle was constantly running under the closer one and drove me nuts.
As for the future, there are a couple things that I already know I'll change in my next one. One is to use 1.5" velcro instead of 1". I haven't noticed any problems with 1" velcro yet, but it can't hurt to go 50% wider. The other thing is to make a couple of loops at the bottom sides of the bag to hold the bottom compression strap on. Otherwise it tends to slide off the bottom of the pannier. Right now I've got a makeshift solution, but for the next bag I'll make a loop using the webbing that the compression buckle is sewn onto.
Now that I feel confident in the design, I'm offering these for sale. So if you don't want to make your own, check out my
etsy shop. If you do want to make your own and have any questions, I'll answer those too.
