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Going on a small tour around Scotland and a bit of Ireland, so I thought I'd get some hard panniers as I'm not a fan of my soft panniers, made up some alu brackets and bought some e22 cases.....I'm not convinced though. Too late to alter and re fabricate new brackets but I guess i can try something different for another time. Seems solid enough but good fun experimenting :)

Looks a heck of a lot neater than most have a great time in sunny scotland :) ... Ireland will be raining so no point saying anything about that

They look the Bog's Dollocks to me

Thanks guys, I'm thinking next time I'll use solid monokey plates rather than the alloy bar I used this time. Hopefully should hold out tho for the wee trip :)

Very neat!

I've seen some new (Givi?) luggage on a 600 Honda that looked very much like Futura shaped panniers.

I put some 45L panniers on my Duc-a-tai Tourer and could hardly get my bloody leg over it at times!

Cheers frank I'm not the tallest at a mere 5,9 lol and I'm catching my feet on those boxes too now.

Shetland Woody wrote:Cheers frank I'm not the tallest at a mere 5,9 lol and I'm catching my feet on those boxes too now.

..... are you sure that Frank was complaining of the same problem?

Falco Frank wrote: and could hardly get my bloody leg over

Lol, I now I have a problem....I fitted a refurbished white spring Mille shock a little while ago, refurbished by revs racing, not that I'm saying there the problem. Before I go on this trip I wanted to soften the rear as it was always a little harsh. I get conflicting info on setting the preload as I had it set to 122mm between base and adjuster rings but after buying a Haynes rsv manuel it states the 1998-2000 preload spring length should be between 128 and 132mm, fair enough! So I set about altering it and although I loosen off the rings and adjust to about 128mm I'm dammed if I can't get it to "grow" any longer. I have adjusted the rings nearly all the way to the top and it. Still claims to be 128mm it's as though while I screw the rings up something else is unscrewing too, if that makes any sense. I've checked underneath and all looks tight but something is definatly amiss I think.

It's also thrown the sag way off, looks like I have a bit of fiddling to do.
Weird thing is tho, while I was adjusting I would measure the spring and say if I needed 5mm to get the correct length I would screw up the top ring with approx 5mm gap between them, screw the bottom ring to meet the upper thinking that will give me the length....measure again and the spring length has never altered. It's doing my nut in, I can't get my head around it.

Ahhhh bugger!!!!! Just been out for a double check and it has been unscrewing the overall height adjustment, the whole bottom half of the shock has been turning!'! Got about 5mm gap between that and the locknut. Looks like I'll either have to pop the shock out to get this sorted or try and get the overall length eyelet to eyelet back in the right distance and start again....

rtfm??

Lol whats rtfm? Or do I not want to know lol

Read the effin manual ? Lol

I don't know what build/weight you are, but I find that standard Aprilia spring rates are way too firm for my liking. On my Red Falco I used an RSV Ohlins shock revalved to work with Falco linkages and had to reduce the spring rate from 800lbs/in to 700 lbs/in to make it feel compliant - a reduction of 12.5%. And that is still on the firm side, although nowhere near as bad as previously.

I guess your white spring Mille shock will have a similar spring rate to what mine started out with, as it will also use Falco linkages.

Thanks for the input mangocrazy, something to look into when I get back,
Cheers for that.