Reviving A -99 Tdm 850

[anda3243]

The panniers

I did some searching for different off the shelf panniers. I didnt find anything that I liked.

I wanted panniers that are opened from the top, so your stuff does not fall out when you open them. I would also preferred aluminium as It looks better.

Most of what I found was in plastic and opened in the "wrong" way. Some were for the 900 bike only. Some were very expensive. Some were very ugly.

After some time I started to look for aluminium boxes, ex military equipment boxes...



After some time I found a small company making what I wanted,

A simple aluminium box with a lid. The box has a lid on hinges and small latches that can be locked with a small padlock. Each box is 33 litres.

These were actually custom made as I wanted 33 not 40 or 45 litre boxes.



For attaching them I bought a used set of givi racks. Can seen in background on the first pic.











It took some time to make the givi racks to sit straight. Then there were some manufacturing, welding and grinding. No pics of that. The idea was to bolt the panniers to the racks with 5 pc M8 bolts and big washers/brackets from inside that spreads out the load.



Here I am cutting out a piece of rubber that will lay inbetween the pannier and the rack. Racks are modified and painted.







Then I attached a cut up sleeping mat as lining. The mat is attached with double sided tape. The lining will prevent my stuff from rattling around too much and rubbing to the aluminium.







The finished result:











The opened lids work as temporary storage when packing and unpacking from the panniers.

But I will need to reinforce the givi racks and attachments of the panniers to the racks. The boxes started to deform after some time.