Hi all,
I though I would share my recent build in case it's of any interest to anyone. I bought a set of givi luggage recently, it's something I've been meaning to do for a long time, and occasionally you can get great quality second hand gear for really decent money if you're patient.
The tricky thing I found was measuring, unfortunately I couldn't find the right dimensions of the givi locking nuts or brackets online, and so everything was made and hand fitted, following the age old procedure of measuring carefully, trial fitting it, getting it awfully wrong, swearing copiously, and remaking from scratch several times.
For the mounting bracket on the top box I luckily had a similar bracket from a previous topbox which I was able to copy using a cardboard template - cut out of 1.2mm mild sheet and beat into submission with my biggest hammer.
Turning the bolts for the panniers wasn't too bad on the lathe but I haven't quite got the trick of making identical parts yet so some more fettling was in order.
Finally, the clip in mounting points for the panniers to lock into was an absolute nightmare - mostly because I had just got a new milling machine and was desperate to try it out, but not matter what I tried I could not get it to lock in properly. Eventually after throwing all of my toys out of the pram I went back to bending sheet metal, and that worked.
The pannier frame was a fairly simple process using whatever scraps I had around, mig welded and fitted section by section onto the bike. I'll eventually finish and paint everything properly but it's nice to know it works.
I though I would share my recent build in case it's of any interest to anyone. I bought a set of givi luggage recently, it's something I've been meaning to do for a long time, and occasionally you can get great quality second hand gear for really decent money if you're patient.
The tricky thing I found was measuring, unfortunately I couldn't find the right dimensions of the givi locking nuts or brackets online, and so everything was made and hand fitted, following the age old procedure of measuring carefully, trial fitting it, getting it awfully wrong, swearing copiously, and remaking from scratch several times.
For the mounting bracket on the top box I luckily had a similar bracket from a previous topbox which I was able to copy using a cardboard template - cut out of 1.2mm mild sheet and beat into submission with my biggest hammer.
Turning the bolts for the panniers wasn't too bad on the lathe but I haven't quite got the trick of making identical parts yet so some more fettling was in order.
Finally, the clip in mounting points for the panniers to lock into was an absolute nightmare - mostly because I had just got a new milling machine and was desperate to try it out, but not matter what I tried I could not get it to lock in properly. Eventually after throwing all of my toys out of the pram I went back to bending sheet metal, and that worked.
The pannier frame was a fairly simple process using whatever scraps I had around, mig welded and fitted section by section onto the bike. I'll eventually finish and paint everything properly but it's nice to know it works.
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