Khalid: I've been touring with my Atlantis since 03 & have loaded it many different ways. The front v rear question comes up in discussions with tourists on all kinds of bikes. It's common for two people with the same bike to each prefer a different loading scheme. In other words, there's no "best way" to load a bike.
Consider that the rider is the majority of the weight and the rider is a live load, ie., moving around, climbing out of the saddle, etc. So individual riding style has a strong influence on how the bike handles with a load. Probably like a lot of other people, I started with just a rear rack & pair of panniers, and a bunch of stuff strapped to the top of the rack. For me, the handling was terrible. Adding front low riders and splitting the load into 4 bags was a huge improvement. At one point on a tour I was getting some noticeabale rear wobbling, so I just swapped front & rear bags. Problem solved. I did some experiments at home with my typical loads and concluded that for me the optimal handling was about 60% on the front and 40% on the rear. My loading for lodging tours is front bags only. For camping tours, I add rear bags for the extra gear. Front low riders on the Atlantis don't seem to affect handling in any negative way. Steering gets a bit heavy but the bike remains stable. I always have an Acorn Boxy Rando bag on a small Nitto front rack on the bike, and don't hesitate to load the bag full with all kinds of junk. The rack, bag & contents proably top 5-6 lbs frequently. My suggestion is for you to experiment with load placement on your own bike at home. Your riding style, where you like the load (high or low), how much weight, etc., are all individual variables. It's actually a fun exercise if done at home on a known route, instead of trying to sort it out while on tour. One bit if advice: spend the bucks for good racks; they are worth it. Nitto, Tubus, Bruce Gordon, etc. I will promise a cheap, flimsy rack, regardless of placement, will make your life miserable with 20 lbs of panniers attached to it. dougP On Apr 5, 8:05 am, Khalid Mateen <krm2...@gmail.com> wrote: > Morning Everyone: > > I know that the Atlantis is design for rear loading more than front loading > but do any of you guys fight with the instability of front loading on a > Atlantis? > > Thanks > > K. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
