Bicycle top tube phone bag
2015-11-04 by pzz-bridge
I made a number of modifications to the VO bag. First, I removed all of its native leather attachment straps with metal buckles, of which there were 4: two for the handlebars (you can see them in use here
), one on the underside of the bag for attaching it to the center of the rack's platform, and one at the rear for hooking over the rack's "tombstone." Unlike on some other bags, the straps on the Campagne are not permanently attached,top tube bag for road bike
but threaded through, so removing them is easy. But I did cut off the D-ring attachments on the sides of the bag: They were stiff and sticking up in a way that interfered with the top flap sitting flush (can be seen here
as well). I will extract the remaining bits of leather eventually, but for now it's just a rough cut. Removing the leather straps and buckles made the bag quite lightweight - though there are still metal buckles on the front and rear pockets that I would love to replace with elastic cords, for the sake of convenience.Going for a decaleur-free setup, my main goal was to attach the bag to the front rack as firmly as possible. With the native attachment system, the single strap on the underside of the bag hooks around a central point on the rack. Attached in that manner, the bag will pivot and sway without a decaleur. So what I wanted to do instead was attach the bag to the outside edges of the rack at 4 widely spaced points. There are several ways to approach this,cycling rear
pannier bag and others have done it successfully using a variety of methods including velcro straps and metal rivets. Here I tried strong nylon cords. My husband used his leather punch to make 4 holes in the bottom of the bag, through the fabric as well as the stiffener. The cords are routed through the rack's light mount/strut eyelets (see below) and tied together tightly inside the bag, as shown
