I'm stoked- i just mounted up my ammo boxes!

[baldwithglasses]

I've been sweating hard bags for my little Wee-MW for a bit now, so i've been sitting on some old 40mm ammo cans and obsessing how I was gonna mount 'em up to the old Krauser-style pannier loops on the rear end.

I finally got bugs out of my butt Sunday and went to work carving up hockey pucks with an angle grinder and an old wheel ( please wear some kind of respiratory protection if you try this *cough*), as well as rounding up knobs and bolts and fender washers and lockwashers.

Here's what I've got:

I tested 'em out on bumpy dirt roads and country roads while loaded up with jugs of water and old books... no faults at all.

I brought the bike with me up to Tennessee today- about four hours riding total- and the bags barely budged.

 

[ppaintguy]

Wow that was really creative! Very cool. You can carry some gear with those now.

 

[PGlaves]

I've been sweating hard bags for my little Wee-MW for a bit now, so i've been sitting on some old 40mm ammo cans and obsessing how I was gonna mount 'em up to the old Krauser-style pannier loops on the rear end.

I finally got bugs out of my butt Sunday and went to work carving up hockey pucks with an angle grinder and an old wheel ( please wear some kind of respiratory protection if you try this *cough*), as well as rounding up knobs and bolts and fender washers and lockwashers.

Here's what I've got:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13719059@N05/

I tested 'em out on bumoy dirt roads and country roads while loaded up with jugs of water and old books... no faults at all.

I brought the bike with me up to Tennesee today- about four hours riding total- and the bags barely budged.

They look great.

Now do some careful testing!

You need to make sure that you don't get strange airflow at the back of the bike. Sneak up on speed slowly to see what happens.

This is not just idle speculation. I had a set of ammo cans on an R80GS - which started to dance around at the back end at about 60 mph. The oscillation at the back started a good wobble at the front. It may not happen to you - but do some real careful testing before you pull our and whack it to pass a car. Wrong time to be wondering what is happening.

 

[OfficerImpersonator]

Hey - a 40mm ammo can is what we poop in on river trips!

 

[baldwithglasses]

Thanks, all. I was wondering why the cans smelled funny...

I performed some careful double-blind tests while I was in Nashville this week, darting back down I-65 at bursts up to 90 mph. And yes, things got a little wiggly.

I figured that my next move is to install some GhettoTek(tm) laminar-flow-device-thingies to the boxen (read: add some drawer handles for strap duty) to smooth out the turbulence a bit. I figure by dirtying the air a bit over the boxes I'll get less vacuum eddies behind the bike.

I also drop-tested the bags last night, too. I can tell you that they did a bang-up job of protecting the bike.

 

[The_Veg]

How does weight compare against regular side-cases?

 

[rkasal]

Nice.

Very business-like. I like the "company name," "GhettoTek." You should, seriously, consider a business with that name making work bags/panniers for bikes and ATV's.

Regards,


Randy Kasal

 

[SPINCKNEY135346]

ammo cans

wow, I bought my 99 F650 with the exact same set up on it. thought it was the only one out there like it. i took them off immediately because I was just learning to ride and didn't need the extra weight throwing me off, but now that I'm a little better I want to paint them flat black and reinstall so I can actually carry some stuff with me.

 

[baldwithglasses]

Hiya, Veg-

Weight-
The ammo boxes weigh 18 lbs apiece, and I carved them up lightly to take off half a pound. The hardware- pucks, misc. washers, bolts, and doohickeys- pork everything out about 3/4s of a pound. Let's say the GhettoTek(tm) Unholy Cases of the Apocolypse weigh in at 20 lbs apiece with the hardware. Remember- these bags aren't the kinda cool-and-nerdy chick from bandcamp- these babies are like that big lonely girl who works at Waffle House: sure, she's big and chunky, but she's a cheap date and will go whenever you want...



Hiya, Randy-

Thanks for the props. I'm glad to spread the knowledge and know-how, and I have no Scotch problem bourbonfabbing up mounts for folks who are bourbonwilling to (over)payScotch . But think of it this way- I've done what anybody else of us here on this forum can do- I mean, for (expletive-starting with-"f")'s sake, we've managed to set up and/or use our motorcycles and our computers- fabbing 'em up is just as easy and really doesn't take that much time. But if your Scotch time is short, sure, we can bourbonwork something out Scotch .


Hiya, SPINCKNEY135346-

With some kind of removable mounts- either GhettoTek(tm) or Touratech or KLR650 or HappyTrails or whatever- you can have the flexibility of riding with your luggage or not. Just today, I rode up to the Sunday Morning Manly-Man ride, removed and stashed the luggage, rode like somebody stole my Schwinn, came back, remounted the bags, and rode 60 miles back home after a nice meal.