At what point do you decide that the effect of all the weight on one side makes it worth the added weight of the other pannier just to balance it out.

A little before I get to this stage.

I have done a couple of 1000km tours with one 20 litre Ortleib pannier, clothes, wash stuff, pair of birkies, bike spares. This was on a 26in mtb/tourer. Not sure I’d do the same on my Pompino.

Dunno, I regulalry stuff loads into one pannier with no problems (700c drop bared tourer). I imagine it would be more intersting if youi did it on the fork!

On the back no problem – I’ve commuted with one pannier, occassionally very heavily laden with books etc, for years. You just adjust the balance point instinctively, it does occassionally feel odd in slow corners and in slippy conditions.

Its bulk more than weight that ends up dicatating how many panniers. For me anyway.

I rarely use just one pannier just because I like the bike to feel balanced. I’d imagine if you’re knocking out the miles at a decent pace with an unbalanced bike you’d end up with some aches down one side – can’t be good to put too much strain down just one side of your body for any length of time if you can avoid it.

i find it very odd riding with one pannier if i’m carrying any more than a few clothes.

I also agree with TonyD, if i was putting the mile in i’d want the bike well balanced

It really dosn’t ‘unbalance’ the bike at all. I guess you’re leaning the bike over slightly to compensate – but its hardly even enough to notice. It certainly dosn’t affect your body position or force you to ‘hold’ anything in a funny way. I’ve ridden 50-60 miles with no adverse affect.

i disagree, it does unbalance the bike.

do you think there is some kind of magic force that will counter the fact that you have altered the centre of gravity of the bike?

the only thing that can counter this is your body, causing a change of position.

put in a few hundred or thousand miles with that slight change of position and you are going to notice it, it’d be like riding with your bars off axis.

Well, I don’t want to argue, this isn’t my experience, commuting, touring or riding audaxes, so we may have to agree to disagree.

I always use two panniers ,even if they are only half full,but that may be my OCD for symmetry kicking in. 🙂

anotherdeadhero

we may have to agree to disagree.

you can’t say that on here!

fight damn you!

BITCH!

*pulls mmw’s hair*

i said fight not come on to me 😯

on a more serious note, i think it really depends on what you are doing. It does alter the physical balance of the bike, perhaps you are comfortable doing this. personally at the sorts of speed you can get up to on a loaded tourer in ‘the hills’ i’d be uncomfortable if i didn’t trust that my bike would react exactly as i’d expect it too. my tourer is a probably sensitive to this as it has carbon forks, i’m sure the wife’s tank Ultra Galaxy would just shrug it off

I’ve never given it much thought before but today, I put the pannier on the bike while was leant up in the garage and it was enough weight to pull the bike over. Don’t really notice it when riding but it reminded me of when my osteopath recommended I didn’t put my wallet in my back pocket if I was going to be sitting down.

I use one pannier, and sometimes it’s got about 20lb in it (like the time I’d been to the butchers for my weekly meat & veg shop and then I got a call to pick up my Soul frame that had been welded, and the postie delivered my fork that I’d sent back to Magura for service).

It makes a bit of a difference, and track stands are a bit more precarious. But I suppose it would still feel cumbersome if the weight was evenly distributed.

That might be it then – my racks are fitted to my commuter (read ‘tank’) and our tandem – and there is all sorts of wonky balance issues on the tandem anyway 🙂

anotherdeadhero – Member
Well, I don’t want to argue

but dis is da internetz?