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@roadkill.com (http://www.roadkill.com/~davet)
From: Rik Steenwinkel (rsteenw@ibm.net)
To: List: bmw-gs@micapeak.com
Subject: Re: comparing aluminum panniers
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.
Goetz
Postbox 180
72406 Bisingen
+49 7476 933150 (voice)
+49 7476 933250 (fax)
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.
// Rik Steenwinkel '91 R100GS/PD
// Enschede, Netherlands '85 R80ST