My Al Jesse panniers arrived Friday night, and so naturally I was up at
6:00am Saturday installing them. I've looked into other aluminum panniers
(Darr and Tesch), and actually bought a set of Tesch boxes and rack for
my R100GS. I'm really impressed with the Al Jesse aluminum panniers. It's
apparent alot of engineering and detail has gone into these. There are many
places that one could cut corners and save money in building these, but
it's obvious from looking at these panniers, that the point was to build
the best Aluminum boxes on the market, rather than save/make money.
I like the little details thrown in such as the brushed aluminum finish,
clear coating the outside, painting the inside, high quality thick
gloss painted frame, additional washer spacers thrown in,
blue prints/pattern for making pannier liners, fine attention paid to
grinding weld bead for finish, etc. Considering these boxes are all
hand made and are of extremely high quality, I think $1000 is a bargain.
Comparing them to other systems....
Tesch system has the most rigid frame I've ever seen, that can take
incredible abuse and carry quite a bit of weight. It's likely that
the rear sub frame would break before the luggage system would. I have
less than optimal diameter mounting bolts to compensate for this, so that
the bolts would likely break before either frame would. It's easy to
carry spare bolts. The Aluminum panniers come in two styles: box shaped,
and box with lower outside edge sloped. The later are actually Tesch's
personal design, and come with an optional internal fuel cell, and a lid
that can double as a small table with fold out legs. The former have an
optional steal jerry can holder which one can mount up to 4 2.5 gallon
jerry cans ( 2 forward, 2 aft). Bernd Tesch points out that the strength
of the luggage rack/boxes and the crash bars around the engine head
creates a safety pocket for ones legs, reducing the risk of injury which
could cut short one's trip around the world.
While I do feel a little more protected with the Tesch system on my R100GS
in the event of a crash, I do feel uncomfortable when negotiating tight
areas that my Tesch panniers might catch on something. Further,
when driving above 55 miles per hour, my mileage per gallon really plummets.
Volume-wise, the Tesch panniers I have are the same as the Al Jesse's,
except the space is more usable in the Tesch straight boxes. Tesch
has some narrower panniers, however at the expense of volume. Also,
the external jerry can carriers only work with the 100L system.
The Tesch boxes can be removed by undoing 4-5 screws per box. This is
something the Al Jesse system has a clear advantage.
>From memory.... I think I paid 800 DM for the rack, and 200DM for each
aluminum box, total 1200DM. At the time I bought them this would be $800,
but I think today it would now be closer to $1000.
The Darr boxes are sold by Capital Cycle, or if you happen to be
in Munich, you can pick up some at the Darr shop. The only mounting
system I've seen for these allow one to mount to the bmw
luggage frame, which personally I wouldn't want to count on in the event
of a fall.
Dave Thompson
Champaign IL
'82 R65LS '92 R100GS '81 R80G/S davet@spyglass.com
** Reply to note from bmw-gs@micapeak.com Sun, 28 Jul 96 16:52:32 -0700 (PDT)
Dave Thompson wrote:
& The Darr boxes are sold by Capital Cycle, or if you happen to
& be in Munich, you can pick up some at the Darr shop. The only
& mounting system I've seen for these allow one to mount to the
& bmw luggage frame, which personally I wouldn't want to count
& on in the event of a fall.
I've seen the Darr boxes offered by other outdoor shops (not
necessarily M/C oriented), and one German mailorder co.
(Goetz) has them in combination with an adapter for
Hepco&Becker carriers. There are also universal mounts for
15mm or 18mm dia. luggage racks.
The universal mounts are basically four disks, one each corner
of the luggage rack loop. Two have a fixed lip, two have a
rotating one. They get bolted on from the inside of the case,
four bolts each, and the two rotating lips also get tightened
from the inside, via a capnut with a large knurled ring. Box
positioning can be tweaked, obviously before you start
drilling the holes. Touratech also uses these with their alu
boxes.
The Hepco&Becker adapters have an angle profile along part of
the box underside, inside and rear, so they can only be fixed
in one position (short of cutting and rewelding the adapters).
The bottom of the box sits level with the lower part of the
luggage rack loops, the back is in the plane of the latch.
Three bolts go through the rim on the bottom of the box, five
more through the side and the back.
They ship international (US is DM.40 shipping/handling), per
UPS. Order numbers for the adapters are
H&B left : 119900, DM.119
H&B right : 119901, DM.119
H&B pair : 11990, DM.229
Universal, 15mm: 14350, DM.75
Universal, 18mm: 14351, DM.75
I've never ordered with them, so I don't know how they rate
that way.
Far be it from me to sit back and be quiet....I became involved with a
set of Al Jesse bags in a moment of weakness at the MOA rally in
Morganton, and I have a few complaints to air following 6 months and
10,000 miles of use, including a Virginia to California & back camping
trip:
1) As with my one-piece Aerostitch Roadcrafter, there is too much storage
space and too many nooks and crannies in which to lose things. Little
odds and ends can submerge early on a trip and not surface until things
are completely unpacked after I've returned home.
2) I can carry one small-block Chevy cylinder head in each bag and close
the lids, but if I try to carry a 6-cylinder head in a bag, the lid won't
close. (I generally strap a single head on the rack in the middle, so
this is a bit of a non-issue unless some other unwieldy object is already
occupying the rack.)
3) When I carry my cats to the vet for tuneup or other service, it's nice
for each one to have a big roomy bag to lounge around in, but some sort
of drain hole or automatic bailing device would be handy in transit, and
especially afterwards during cleanup. This would also come in handy
during ice-chest/beer cooler applications, as referred to by brother
Alex, who, incidentally, provided some of the inspiration for my getting
involved with Al Jesse's bags in the first place.
4) When using a bag for live fish storage while far away from home and
hungry, the left bag gets too much heat from the muffler, rendering the
water too warm for trout. One can mitigate this problem by using the
right-hand bag for this (or the aforementioned beverage-related)
applications, but what if the right bag has already been dedicated to
some other (drier) activity? It would seem that some modicum of
insulation between the left bag and the muffler would be in order.
Listen up, Al !!!!!!!!!!
Regards,
Nick Evans
Mayflower Garage
Barboursville, Virginia
1050 G/SPD