one of the things that i'm a little bit embarrassed to admit that i didn't check when
i was looking into bike packing was capacities and all together my blackburn system has about 26 to
28 liters of capacity now if you're a backpacker you know that that's in the ultralight through
hiker category that's a very small volume now many people overcome this by strapping things to the
outside of their bike and that's kind of where i am now with just kind of random things strapped
on my bike all over the place sometimes you'll even see people strap things to their lower
stanchions on their forks but that's not something you're likely ever going to see me do
because that severely impacts your suspension performance the only time i'd ever consider that
is if i were going to ride an all paved or very easy gravel route and i'm going to ride it fully
locked out and i don't need my suspension since my bike packing rig is a hard tail i would like
to see if i can transfer some of that weight into the rear triangle and into the rear axle i want to
see if panniers can solve some of the issues that i have and just overall make the experience better
but i don't need all of the capacity of a touring bike and all of the weight that that brings to i'd
still like to keep things lightweight so i chose the smallest and lightest weight panniers i could
find and those are the gravel pack panniers by ortlieb the pair of gravel pack panniers weigh two
and a half pounds but they also bring 25 liters of capacity the panniers will replace my blackburn
outpost seat bag it weighs just under a pound and a half and has maybe seven liters of capacity
it is also not a very stable platform and things flop around there a lot now it probably goes
without saying that you can't just go and attach your panniers to your rear triangle
so i need a solution for that too the mounting solution that i chose is the sherpa rack by
old man mountain i chose the sherpa rack because it's all aluminum construction
and the rack plus all of the mounting hardware come in at about a pound and a half so it's really
lightweight together we're going to install it and i'm going to tell you what i think about it
now old man mountain has an install video out there that details how to do this completely
so i'm not going to try to reproduce that i'm just going to show you how it fits on a farley and what
i discover in that this is the hardware kit that i got for the farley i got some hardware a new
axle two dropouts to connect to that axle some support braces that connect into the seat stays
some blocks to connect to the seat stays and i got a set of zip ties to connect the blocks to
the seat stays the first thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to check the stock axle
in the new axle i'm going to flex tie this wheel to the bike so that i can take the stock axle out
comparing the stock axle with the axle that old man mountain provided
it looks like i do not need to use these spacers and it looks like the threads engage really nicely
now let's apply some grease to their axle and install it
now i just got to remove that flex tie because
that would not be fun to go try to ride off with that on there
now we're at the point where tory in the video is telling me to install the dropouts onto the
rack and this is all really good hardware it's stainless steel hardware and i like that very much
and there you have it dropouts on the rack now it's time to put the rack onto the bike
for a test fit raise this on over and put the dropouts onto the axle ends
look at the clearance not a whole lot of clearance on a four and a half inch tire but
i like the way that fits let's go ahead and rock that forward and go and get the braces
now that i'm looking at it i think that um using my actual braze-ons that the farley has
might be a good route i i thought i might use the pucks and add a little bit more leverage
by putting these braces out a little bit further but i think that's going to be
pretty good right there next i'm just going to snug up the axle bolts a little bit here
the great news is their m5 hardware fits into my braze-ons or eyelets here
now i've set the bike down here on the ground so that i can make sure everything is level before
i snug everything up and then torque it to spec before i torque it to spec i think it's probably
important for me to do a test fit of the panniers in case i need to change anything or those
extenders don't work the gravel pack panniers connect to the rack using this quick disconnect
system that when you pull on the handle to lift them off the bike they will release here's the
handle right here on the bottom of the pannier are these paddles and these paddles connect into the
frame of the bike rack and they're very adjustable to connect the connection points
to the old man mountain rack this is a 10 millimeter rail and so i have to find the
spacers in this kit that are 10 millimeter and insert them into these connection points
now we can test it out by dropping one of these bags down on the rack and seeing how that goes
oh that's lovely that's one bag just sitting there all right let's drop the other one on
all right looks like i'm going to get to do what i want to do
this paddle will connect into the extender with the frame behind it and the other paddle
is connecting in with the frame so it looks like everything's going to work out fine the way i want
to install it to the braze-ons okay i'm super excited that this is all going to work the way
i wanted it to i'm going to go ahead and take the bags off and torque everything down to spec
here they are a set of ortlieb gravel pack panniers on an old man mountain sherpa rack
on a trek farley i'm eager to try these out and jay will and i have an adventure coming
up this next weekend it's just an overnighter but it's going to be perfect to try these out
i'm aware that panniers have their own set of cons when using them
like when you're doing a hike a bike your legs might bump into them i've even heard
people say that they bounce around a lot on the trail and they can make quite a racket
when i go on my first trip i'll be sure to report back to you what i think of them later