11 years ago we crossed Central Asia on a Suzuki Vstrom 650 equipped with bunch of products made by our fabrication shop. There wasn’t any sort of plan to make motorcycle parts though.
Fast forward to 2024 and we’re fully focused on making motorcycle aftermarket parts. Primarily for dual sport and adventure bikes.
One thing that didn’t occur to us for about 6-7 years and that is to manufacture our own aluminum panniers/hard cases. However, during a ride with one of our associates the topic came up. After discussing the pros and cons we reached a conclusion: it’s worth a shot as long as we introduce some new features.
Thus we began an R&D project we never had done before. We started to go through various prototypes, which even included 3D panniers. Yes, full size panniers! Yes, we also put them on bikes and rode with them deep down hoping they’d not fall apart during the ride.
The next set of samples was made of aluminum and it was functional, but there were many “buts”. The shape was not that ideal, the lid closure was not effective, the external mounting points were too sharp and not functional in the long run. Regardless we conducted our most extensive testing period that year (2022) which involved size riders. After about 3 months we went back to the “drawing board” to work out some kinks.
2023 looked like the year to release the aluminum panniers finally. Things were looking bright and we even managed to design external MOLLE panels that mounted on top of the lids and on the backside of the panniers. Then we made a big push to finalize our own mounting system, but at this point we already knew that Mosko Moto was going to sell their Bakccountry mounting system to us. Still, we wanted to offer two mounting systems to our customers. By mid September our panniers were ready for testing and we couldn’t have been more stoked! Off to Central Oregon we went and rode quite a lot off pavement in order to make it more of a torture test as well.
The conclusion was not what we hoped for: the Mosko Moto Backcountry mounting system was superior, the MOLLE panel feature was a premature idea and the divider walls inside the panniers were not stable enough to stay in place on bumpy rides. The rest of the features were good though!
Except, we still had to find a way to make those Backcountry mounting systems lockable to pannier racks without using a padlock.
We spent most of the winter fine tuning the locking solutions, the corner caps, the strap anchors on top of the lids and the interior foam insulation/sound deadening.
Ultimately by 2024 March we were getting ready to begin the production of the first batch and as of today we’re preparing the second batch with essentially no changes.
Availability via this link: Aluminum Panniers
