Oooops - there goes the Ventura rack!!!

Sunday morning I took my girlfirned to a motorcycle riding class and dropped her off all excited... She took a few things out of the ventura bag (old Euro rally 44-55lt style) and spun off to return home the 50km or so at a nice leisurely pace with some pumping tunes in my ears... It was a sunny day, traffic was light.... the world was a good place.
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The journey started in the industrial estate behind an airfield, and I enjoyed a little bit of pace as I took on the speedbumps and had a bit of fun.

By the time I'd got home, I had travelled through industrial estates, along freeways, through suburban main roads and on residential back streets.

I parked up, got off the bike and saw to my horror the Ventura bag and rack had completely gone.... all was left was the 2 upright mounts to slot the rack into, and only 1 of the locking bolts...

Fortunately there was nothing terribly valuable in the bag: a trickle charger, my sunglasses and the old vehicle manual with service stamps dating back to 2002.... shame to lose - but nothing that'll kill me.

I retraced my steps in the car, scouring the roadside for debris or a big chunk of bag - but found nothing. I spoke to police and asked if they had picked anything up... nothing...

So I can assume that's the end of that!!!

Fortunately I had a look on gumtree (2nd hand trading site) and found a ventura topbox with all brackets for a very reasonable sum - so it looks like I'll be upgrading from a bag to a topbox! (and look a little less like a deliveroo driver!)

Cautionary tale: make sure your ventura locking nuts are tight!!! Particularly if you're going to have fun over speedhumps!

 

Sorry to hear that, can happen very easy, I rode off this Summer and forgot to zip the tank bag shut, a certain blast of wind and all the contents flew up around me, smashed my phone to bits and bank cards/licence etc were scattered all over the road,
lesson learned hopefully, could have been worse.

 

Went out yesterday and top box fell off. This time I noticed and fortunately it was on a deserted bit of road - so I picked it up and managed with the aid of the limited onboard toolbox to resecure it.

The locknuts were still in position and still pretty tight - but the rack had slipped out.

I checked again about an hour later and once again it was slipping.

I think I need to drill a new hole clean through the pipework on both sides of the frame so I can put a bolt right through it on both sides and get threadlock on the nuts to make a more permanent fix instead of relying on the nut to just squeeze up against the inner pipe - which clearly is not adequate!

 

That sounds like a great solution; don't want this to happen again