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  Sort yer luggage - Baglux Whoppa Bag

Travelling about Europe is great fun on a bike, but with the sort of sportsbikes we ride what do you do about luggage? After years of having various old bags and rucksacks bungeed to the rear seat, accompanied by lashings of gaffa tape to protect tail units, perhaps it's time to invest in some proper luggage and make life a bit easier.

It seems the French have also got fed up with bungee straps marking the paintwork of their rear panels and have come up with a luggage solution for those short motorcycle weekends where you don't want to;

A/ Wear a ruck sack for the totally non racer look.
B/ Cover the entire back end of your bike in duct tape. Bugger to get off too.
C/ Have aforementioned bungees or cargo nets all over the bike.

One bit of kit to solve A, B and C above, is the Baglux Whoppa. This ingenious design allows you to carry a load of jeans, T-shirts, waterproofs, undercrackers, socks and perhaps anything else you would normally carry under the rear seat hump. Of course, if like me you own a '95 onwards Fireblade this won't account for much.

The bag sits on the pillion seat, but rather ingeniously avoids the need for unsightly bungees and rolls of gaffa tape by employing a discrete mounting system.

The idea is that the bag is held on with zips, two each side. The part of the fixing that stays on the bike is strategically bolted below the rear seat hump and even when the bag is not attached is reasonably well hidden. When the bag is in situ and firmly zipped on, it stays there too, but here comes the bad bit.

The whole idea of carrying soft luggage on a bike is to get it on and off your bike quickly and easily, whilst loaded, and zips would seem the perfect solution. Well, in some ways they are, but only if both ends of the zip (male and female if you like?), are securely fastened to ensure sliding into each other is carried out with ease, this was not the case with mine that I purchased from HPS for the princely sum of £91.22.

The zips were a bugger to get attached to each other as the ends were difficult to slip into each other to get the zipper to zip. The answer? Attach the luggage to your bike whilst leaving all the contents sitting on the ground. This was the solution and made fitting the bag a bit easier. However, when I first came to load all the contents back in, they wouldn't fit; once the bag is secured in place on the rear seat of the bike you lose about 5 litres of luggage space because the seat is curved and presses into the base of the bag. This also causes the removable reinforced sides to raise themselves making the lid hard to close.

Anyway, I persevered for 3 trips like this until the zip puller broke and that was it, back to the dreaded ruck sack. However, I did send the faulty zipper items back to HPS who promptly replaced them with ones that did look much better, so fair play to HPS. Further practice and perhaps I now have the knack.

When fitting the bag to the seat fixing it seems best to do one up zip up half way only before attempting to do the other. This gives you more room to play with between the bag zips and the seat fixing. It is probably still best to attach the bag unloaded, or at least with the top unzipped as you just can't get round the fact that you do lose luggage space once it is in place. The odd thing is Baglux don't include this knack of attaching the bag in the instructions. Well, they do on their site now ...

Anyway, I have just used the bag all weekend and once in place it is secure and the waterproof lid is exactly that - it chucked it down at one point and there was only a small moist patch in my jeans when I unpacked them. I'm pretty sure it was water that made them moist?!

  Renntec carrier and bag

Nah, bollocks to Tet's zips and having to leave your pants all over the driveway while you struggle with your ever diminishing bag.

My idea is to divorce the bag completely from the tail unit or seat with a nice rack in a discrete shade of black. This one is the Renntec model for £55. Renntec also do a matching tailpack for £36 which fastens very neatly to the rack with two wide velcro bands and a quick release strap to add stability and a bit of failsafe security.

The rack fastens to existing mountings under the pillion seat. The fitting kit includes the necessary longer bolts and a couple of spacers to keep everything at the right level. The rack stands just clear of the tail unit so there's no damage to your shiny plastic. The only mod needed on the Fireblade version is to remove the helmet brackets under the seat and to take off the seat strap, no great loss.

The underseat storage area, such as it is, is not affected by the rack mount so you can still get a tool or two and a bit of a puncture repair outfit in there. The seat pad fits back on as normal.

The bag is good. It can be used as standard as in the pic above, or a simple spiral zip undoes to double the height for those longer trips where additional pants are required. It's not waterproof, but Renntec do include a waterproof cover. Unfortunately this appears to be made of rather too delicate material and mine fell apart on the first trip. But here is it prior to its demise.

The bag can be crammed full in the privacy of your hotel room and then easily fitted to the rack in seconds, while Tet struggles with his zips, skiddies fluttering across the hotel forecourt.

But a word of warning: don't extend the bag to full height and cram it with heavy stuff - the rack carries the bag high up and behind the rear wheel, so some very odd handling traits can arise with overzealous luggaging. Best to avoid the extension and invest in lycra evening wear ...

  Oxford products map holder

I've had on of these for years and it's been great, but with the advent of plastic tank covers the old magnetic map pocket was destined for the bin, until I cut off the magnet holders, D loop and string for headstock and made it a far more versatile item, but I got fed up with duck tape and Velcro holding it in place, so opted for a new one.

Oxford now produce an updated version that is suitable for plastic tank covers as it has 6 x suckers on the bottom and these hold it firmly in place, well 4 of them do anyway, as the flaps are too wide for my tank and don't quite stick on the sides.

The map pocket itself is far bigger than the old one and means you can have a wider spread of map ensuring you don't have to stop and refold it every 40 miles. Try doing this in a gusty wind and you'll find out it's not always a simple task. One other bonus to the new map pocket is a Velcro securing for the slot the map slides into and this helps keep all sorts of nastiness out, including rain I suspect. The conclusion is I am generally happy with this product, but it may succumb to the Stanley knife, especially the side flaps.

  Roadtourers ... Tour-racers?

Another handy item for the touring gentleman is the ubiquitous tank cover, rather essential for affixing tankbags and mapholders to plastique tanks. These are made by Baglux and come in a variety of styles and shades to suit most current bikes. They have handy little front fasteners and rear metal loops to accommodate Baglux luggage products. The only thing I would say for sportsbikes is that the bags all site too far rearward, so get in the way, while there is a great big lump of unused space at the front. So prepare to get your needle and thread out for a mod.