Bike Bag Dude Bikepacking Bags - Review

Bike Bag Dude is an Australia-based custom bikepacking bag manufacturer – a two-person enterprise consisting of Kedan and Kath Griffin, who make custom-fitted frame bags, bar harnesses, bar roll-bags, top tube bags, and stem bags. I’ve been testing all except the latter, logging about 3000 dusty kilometers on the bags over the last few months.

When it comes to packing overnight gear onto your mountain bike and heading into the hills for more than a few days, especially on routes that may involve an equal share of cruising on jeep tracks as navigating technical singletrack, getting weight out of a backpack and onto the bike can be the difference between bliss and suffering. In the last couple of years, the bikepacking bag market has been flooded with options form pop-up cottage-industry manufacturers. Only one or two of these companies has approached anything close to mass production. In this contracted world of custom pack makers, Bike Bag Dude stands out as one of the more recognizable brands, mostly for its unique take on bag design - and that uniqueness comes in the form of protruding, weather-sealed seams.

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Design

At first, I was skeptical of the merits this exposed seam idea. Personally, it lends the bags a sort of homemade and unpolished look that, when combined with the somewhat witless “Bike Bag Dude” name, had me regarding the bags with raised eyebrows. I discovered that the "BBD" acronym, placed on all sides of the kit, brings up a few ...uh... startling search engine results - which didn't help to improve my perceptions of the product. What matters most, though, is that the exposed seam design is key to the goal of seam-sealing - a feature that that has been woefully lacking from frame bags.



Sealed Seams: Borrowing from sail-making methods, Bike Bag Dude glues every exposed seam with a two-sided tape membrane before sewing with anti-wicking thread. Of course, anti-wicking thread could still let some water through, but since the seams are on the outside, the goopy membrane in the seam means the thread is never actually exposed to the inside of the bags.

Stable attachments: The reversed seams also benefit the stability of frame and top-tube bags, it turns out, since the seams hug the frame, and allows the bags’ volume to be adjusted to a greater degree than with other frame bags, by loosening or cinching down the hook-and-loop straps. So, despite my misgivings on the aesthetics of the “seams out” design, I’ve come to appreciate it and even applaud it.

Reinforced fabric: Unless you request something else, Bike Bag Dude uses X-Pac laminated nylon fabrics throughout, a stiff and extremely strong material that helps the bags maintain their shape when stuffed with food and gear. All zips are size-eight, weather-resistant YKK zippers, and all Velcro straps are of the two-sided variety, with the soft side in, presumably to help reduce wear on frame and handlebar.

Custom fit: All bags are made to order, with many color choices. Learn from my mistake - don't choose yellow. Frame bags and top-tube “Garage” bags are also lined with brightly-colored rip-stop nylon for ease of visibility.



Top Tube Bag

The Bike Bag Dude “Garage” bag is way bigger than most other top tube bags. I can fit all the things I want handy when out bikepacking: multi-tool, full-sized Leatherman, spork, tube of sunscreen, headlamp, fingerless gloves (since I avoid wearing these unless the sun is burning my hands), chap stick, and sunglasses.



Handlebar Roll

The handlebar roll is a two-piece modular bag consisting of a padded sling, which straps onto the handlebar and headtube, and a sewn roll-bag that buckles into the harness. There is no option for an accessory pocket, as is often found on similar products. Coupled with the monstrous Garage Bag, I can't say I've missed having a pocket up front (the worst place to carry weight on a bike, anyway).



Bike Bag Dude's take on the handlebar roll is pretty minimalist – a design philosophy I usually look for. It attaches to the handlebar with Velcro, which I could get much tighter than the more typical webbing options. But, without any sort of spacer to keep the sling away from the handlebar, it was a real challenge to mount on a standard riser bar, without forcing cables to uncomfortable angles. I cut some closed-cell foam blocks to use as spacers to keep the harness off the bar and control cables. The result worked, and thanks in part to the Velcro attachment, proved impressively stable with a five-pound load.



One-inch-wide webbing and large boxy looking buckles that are used on the harness and roll-bag look like they came off a backpack from the '80s, They are way bigger than is necessary, and while they hold the roll-bag very securely, oversized hardware has little merit for such simple closures. The roll-bag itself is reinforced against abrasion in the middle with a second layer of X-Pac, which is necessary because, if you're using wide bars, the sling is not wide enough to protect the roll bag against abrasion by the brake levers and cables.

Unfortunately, I discovered the reinforcement strip's flat seam lets water through – I'm not sure if it lacks the sealing membrane, or whether water can just wick through the threads much more easily on a flat seam. Either way, the result was damp sleeping gear after riding through hard rain. Given the sling is sold alone for $80AUD, most of the cost of Bike Bag Dude's handlebar roll is tied up in this less-than-waterproof roll bag. Mass-produced dry bags can easily be found for about $30, so Bike Bag Dude's $120AUD roll bag seems unreasonable. The price further jumps up by $30AUD for every additional three centimeters in diameter. That is less than ten centimeters of additional material, and no significant change to labour cost, which makes the larger bags even more out of line with affordable alternatives.



Frame Bag

Bike Bag Dude's answer to the frame bag is the only option I've seen that gives more than a symbolic nod to the effort of waterproofing. While they make no claims that the bag is actually waterproof (since water can pass through the teeth of water-resistant zippers), it has proven totally weatherproof against heavy rain. Much of this comes down to the sealed seams, but some of its water-resistance comes from the lack of a hydration-port, which often manifests as forward-facing funnel where the hydration hose exits the bag.



The only drawbacks I found with the frame-mount bag came from the use of size-eight YKK zippers, as opposed to size ten, which is common on other frame bags. I also had trouble with the double-sided Velcro retention straps. After about two months in dusty conditions, the main zipper's slider had worn enough that the teeth no longer remained closed behind it. My usual method of pinching the slider closed with pliers failed to completely solve the problem. Meanwhile, the double-sided Velcro, with its rough side out, would occasionally grab my shorts when I straddled my bike. And again, after two months of travel, a couple of these straps were tearing where they mounted to the bag body. Fortunately, the seams-out design made it incredibly easy to repair torn straps in the field.

Untested, was how the full-size bag, and its exposed seams mated with a front derailleur. I don't use one, but looking at amount of fabric near the bottom bracket, I'd assume that there would at least be some contact between the bag and a front derailleur. There are two tabs at the lowest vertex of the bag which can be pulled tight to create a taper in order to clear multiple chainrings, and the manufacturers assured me that they've had no problems with front derailleurs.

The frame bag I received for testing came fully loaded: two zippers into the main compartment, a false-floor at half-height that can be opened for stowing large items, and a zippered map pocket on the non-drive-side. While those features were great, for the extra $100AUD, I'd happily stick to a single-zipper. The basic option, with a single compartment and single zipper, coming in at $250AUD, or about $185USD, puts this weatherproof design at a similar price-point to popular, mass-produced alternatives.




Pinkbike's Take:

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