It’s been another weekend of farkling the Concours some more. I’ll split the posts out and cover each thing off separately.
- Phil’s farkle’s rear luggage rack.
- Saddle Bag Inners.
- Carbon Wrapping the mirror covers.
Stella and I spent some time looking on the internet to find some suitable bags for the Kawasaki Concours14’s standard Side Bags / Saddle Bags. These bags are excellent, and large, but quite a strange shape. If you don’t find the right inner, then it’d be a royal pain to use / get into the hard case when packed.
We’ve got some plans to do some touring in the South Island over the Summer months, so Stella was quite interested in finding out what was available for this as it’ll have quite an impact on how easy we find it to move all of our gear around on the bike. – Since I’ve created some locking pins for the panniers, it’s slightly less easy / convenient to think about taking them off the bike when we arrive to where we’re going, and the soft, inner bags make a good, lightweight alternative to having to lug the hard cases around everywhere. – They come with shoulder straps too.
When we were looking around, online; we found that a number of the genuine parts were super expensive, over US$300! – We wanted something much cheaper than that, and were very happy to find some the right shape and size for around the NZ$100 mark (delivered) here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/332723607274
Ordered on the 11th Aug, they turned up (shipped to NZ from the UK) on Saturday morning (25th August), just in time for us to use them this weekend for an overnight trip away, two weeks shipping from the UK for something of this size, and for only £15 shipping is pretty good.
They are exactly the right shape and size, look well made, have good zip options (you can open either side fully, or use the top access zip to get into the bag from above). They have shoulder straps to make moving them around easier.
They are branded ‘GreatBikersGear.com’ – so they may be available more directly from their own site? – https://greatbikersgear.com/product/side-pannier-bags-for-kawasaki-1400-gtr/ – yes, they are available there, but they’re more expensive from their site than I had found on ebay. £44.99 on their site directly on 26th Aug, compared to £45 shipped to NZ on ebay (£30 for the bags and £15 shipping).
Having used them this weekend, we’re really pleased with them.