Touratech panniers for Africa Twin
 

I'm trying to price up Touratech stuff for a rtw trip. The pannier systems they offer are in pre-assbled or not pre-assembled form. Does this just mean the mounting plates and stuff? It's £40 difference. Anyone bought their stuff for the AT, does it assemble ok?

Cheers,
Doug

Pre-assembled means that the four mounting blocks on each box are assembled at the factory.

I've had two sets of Zega boxes on a Touratech rack (first set was eaten by a tractor, long story). The first set came preassembled and found the positioning of the boxes very good. Far enough forward to get the weight in front of the rear wheel, but leaving enough room for a pillion to still get their feet on the pegs.

The second set I got unassembled and did it myself. Not too much effort involved, but I spent a lot of time making sure everything lined up properly, because once drilled you can't go back. Top tip, take the rack off of the bike and offer it up to the boxes to mark where the mounts go. If you mount the boxes too far back they will interfere with the indicators. I tried to get them as low as possible as well.

Hope that helps.

Iain

'02 Africa Twin
'00 XR400

I agree with Iain. I had the pre-drilled boxes and found the positioning perfect for a pillion.

Fitting was fairly simple although all the instructions were, as usual with Touratech stuff, all in German.

I don't know if Touratech include a template for the hole drilling procedure. From Iain's mail it sounds like they don't. I'm sure someone might be willing to make one for you - I would volunteer but my boxes are somewhere over the Atlantic right now. £40 sounds alot of extra cash just for drilling a few holes.

I don't know where you live - for some reason I assume the UK. If you want to save some cash, you might try and buy the boxes in Europe.

Hope this helps.

Matt

Yeah, you get the template. Also in the mail from Touratech (UK) was that the 41 lt fuel tank could expect to have up to 4 lt unusable/out of reach.

On the panniers I may well get them unassembled, as you say £40 for a bit of drilling is a lot. But I'm not sure about the fuel tank. £700 or something for 15 lt of extra fuel. Might be better to save the money and pick up fuel containers along the way if there's a very long ride coming up?

Why not save the £40 and then spend some of it having the panniers anodised? This is covered on another thread somewhere on this board, and worked well for me.

Mike

On the tank subject, Chris Smith got his AT with a bigger tank from somewhere in Italy via Overland Ernie. He said it was much cheaper and not so bulky up top. Could be worth a try.

Hi,

Thanks for the responses. I'm off to Overland Solutions next Friday to talk through the options with Ernie.

Cheers.

Hi Doug,
I recently bought and fitted a set of self-assemble luggage for my RD07 twin.
The German fitting instructions are crap, but if you go onto the US web site they have a nice PDF file to help you line up the boxes on the frame. The jist of it is, you use a couple of ratchet type luggage straps to hold the boxes onto your bike whilst you line them up. Once you have them lined as you wish. You then use some strong double sided tape to hold the plastic mounting blocks in place. Remove the boxes carefully then drill through the holes. I used some of that No-nails type builders adhesive as a back-up to the screws. A point on the luggage frame, the exhaust side frame fitted OK but the other side is so tight to the side panel you end up scratching the side panel if you need to remove it, far from ideal. I had my Scottoiler hidden under that panel but I had to reposition it using a cheap chrome car exhaust tail pipe as a guard and mounted in on the desert bars that I fitted. I had to fit a spacer between the leading mounting point between the mount and the pillion peg. This pushes the leading frame out leaving just enough space to drag the side panel out but I think that it is still to tight. I am still not too happy with it and latter I’ll probably weld a 10 mm extension to all the brackets on that side which will all so make the outside edge of the boxes an equal distance from the bikes centre line. A top tip, when mounting the rear bracket to the indicator bracket it goes on the inside of the mount and not the outside. This was not obvious form the German instructions with the small high lighted picture. If you mount the bracket on the outside it makes the above problem seem even worse.
I all so fitted their desert bars, progressive springs, a centre stand, GPS system, Data Tool alarm immobiliser, rim locks and quick fuel pipe coupler and finished off with a set of Continental Twin Duro TK80’s for my trip down to Morocco. So if you need any help with these items drop us an email. Now I just need the time of work this month to do the trip.

Best Regards

Paul M