Underseat Panniers

[a.twiddler]

28/6/24
Under Seat Panniers

I’d been contemplating splurging on some larger panniers for the Spirit. It has a low seat, and the pannier rack is underneath it, rather than set back a little like some other low seat recumbents. The price for that is less space between the seat base and the ground

After a lot of head scratching and measuring I took the plunge and ordered a set of Carradice Super C recumbent Panniers with the CUK discount. They really are enormous at 31l each and I can’t convince myself that they won’t hit the road with enthusiastic cornering when used under the seat on the Spirit. The depth might not be a problem if they weren’t so wide. There’s not much room under there. There is scope for altering the ride height by tensioning the rear shock but it might give a stiff ride when not loaded. Would I really use all that space?
There's about 1 cm clearance in the photos below.

This doesn't allow for me cranking up the rear suspension, then compressing it again with my weight and luggage

They would fit easily on the Linear, with it being relatively tall for a recumbent. The rack on that looks a long way back but that’s because the seat is well forward. The seat stays would prevent panniers coming much further forward in any case as they are wider than the carrier.

There’s something to be said for having luggage behind the seat back to reduce the wind resistance though you then have to accept the rearward weight bias.

Having the weight beneath the seat evens out the load and improves the handling, acceptable with smaller panniers but risking becoming an air brake with wider ones.
I took the small panniers off the Spirit to try out the Super Cs and have been riding around with just the seat back bag but there’s no denying that the small panniers are handy for shopping.

 

[Arellcat]

The voice of experience says your big Super Cs mounted on your Spirit will inevitably scrape along the ground eventually. I had the same problem when I used my big* panniers under the seat of my RANS V2. After 500 miles along the Erie Canal and various points around, I had all but destroyed the bottoms of them after grounding out on every tight or fast corner. Carradice's cotton duck material is very tough, but it's not grinding-repeatedly-along-tarmac tough; cheap sub-500 den Cordura was much less tough than cotton duck!

The solution then was the Arkel RT40 panniers. For non-underseat applications you could use the RT60s which were huge. I bought my RT40s soon after the tour, and I'm still using them now, although I have no need for their precise shape because they only get used on my P-38 after I sold the V2. Sadly Arkel no longer makes the recumbent panniers, only the seat bag. I did experiment with two Carradice Super C saddle bags (claimed 23 litres each) slung on the underseat rack, but they were nothing like as useably big as the RT40s (which were really just a turned-sideways version of their excellent T-42 panniers.




* well, 18 litres each, but big compared with my little Carradice Super C universal/front panniers

 

[Conrad_K]

If the bags only touch the ground occasionally, you might consider just adding some skids. Get some aluminum angle from the local hardware emporium, drill some holes, and sew them to the bags or punch holes for zip ties.

 

[a.twiddler]

If the bags only touch the ground occasionally, you might consider just adding some skids. Get some aluminum angle from the local hardware emporium, drill some holes, and sew them to the bags or punch holes for zip ties.

I've considered a few things since trying them for size. As @Arellcat says, it looks like they will touch down easily. The paradox is, that with the weight low down it will encourage more enthusiastic cornering so making them even more at risk. The inner edge looks unlikely to ground unless on speed humps. The outer edge is most at risk, and possibly the front, due to the angle of the underseat rack. Some system of straps to raise the outer edge of the panniers? It's not possible to fit in a extra rail to the pannier frame to raise the panniers an inch or so as the clearance for the seat base is tight. Similarly the pannier mounting brackets can't be lowered to raise the height of the panniers. While the thought of adding metal angle and cornering with dramatic showers of sparks is appealing, the road always wins in the end, and anything that regularly contacts the road will wear through.

It's back to plan "A" for now, use the small Carradice ones that I've been using and keep an eye out for used Arkel RT40s or similar. If there was something similar in the Carradice range I'd try for an exchange but I can still use them on the Linear.