Review: Ortlieb Fuel-Pack & Toptube-Bag - Mid-Term

  Note: Ortleib sent over their Fuel-Pack and Toptube-Bag for test and review at no charge to Guitar Ted Productions. I am not being paid, nor bribed, for this review and I will always strive to give you my honest thoughts and opinions throughout. 

This is the second installment of the Ortlieb bag review. The introduction and first impressions can be seen by clicking HERE. 

This post will be focused on how the Toptube-Bag fared on a recent ride and how the Fuel-Pack has "evolved" to make it work for my bicycles. First up, the Toptube-Bag.

This bag and its removable feature utilizes a snap-in base with a spring-loaded release. The base is the part that straps to your bike while the matching rail which attaches via the two-bolt hole standard, is attached to the bag. Together they work to provide a rock-solid base for the Toptube-Bag and one that is stable despite the lack of any attaching strap around the head tube/steerer area, which is common for bags like this. 

So, you can load this bag up and it will not rotate around the top tube, nor does it move when you open the magnetically closed top flap. I found the bag easy to get into and it closes with a reassuring 'snap!' when you flip the lid closed. I was also happy to find that a crosswind was unable to flip the top open, which I have had happen on two other bags with magnetic closures. 

The base without the bag mounted on it.

This bag is pretty big. Almost too big for me, and I wonder if it wouldn't be a problem for riders of smaller stature. Many bags that sit on top tubes taper toward the back end of the bike in profile and in width to accommodate dismounting riders, and legs moving alongside when standing and climbing, or accelerating. My legs slightly grazed the sides of the Toptube-Bag when standing and pedaling. I also had several instances where I jumped off the saddle at a stop and I smashed the Toptube-Bag a bit. 

Part of the problem is that due to this design the bag has to sit back from the head tube a bit more than a typical top tube bag would. But besides those issues, the bag works great. It has a cavernous interior which my smartphone could lay flat in. You could probably get a lot of packable rain jackets inside this bag, for instance. It's just a big volume top tube bag.

The Fuel-Pack was just not viable as sent. This was mostly due to how Ortlieb designed the mount, which set the bag, essentially on stand-offs, in a position where it was easy to rotate the bag around the top tube of any bike I put it on. Now - mind you - almost every bike I own has a round cross-section metal top tube. So there is that. 

The bag mounts are supposed to be held on with silicone rubber straps, but these straps are made from a material that is more plastic than rubber and this doesn't help when you are relying upon friction to stabilize the bag. Furthermore, the hooks the straps were to anchor to were pointed upward into the base of the Fuel-Pack making it almost impossible to strap on the bag. I could do it, but it was a lot harder than it should be to get the bag on the bike. 

So, I ditched the straps Ortlieb sent and modified the plastic base pieces a bit. Then I used Velcro strips and laced these through the plastic base pieces. The Velcro strips made it far easier to mount the bag, but the rotation issue was still there. So, I punched a couple holes into the front of the Fuel-Pack with my hole punch pliers I have and laced a Nylon string through the front, went around the stem/steer tube, and tied it on to stabilize the bag. 

That solved that issue, but there still is one more thing about this bag that was rather surprising, honestly, and that was that it would not ever hold its shape, Not when new out of the box, nor will it do so now. It isn't a 'bad' thing necessarily, but contrast this with the Toptube-Bag which stays perfectly rectangular even after I inadvertently smash it while dismounting, and the Fuel-Pack seems a step below that. 

The Next Step: So, now what? The Toptube-Bag is too big, really, but has this fantastic, stable base. The Fuel-Pack is a much better size but has a dismal mounting system that just wasn't going to work on my bikes. Well.....

What about cross-breeding these two bags? Maybe I could use the fact that the two bags use the two-bolt top tube bag mount standard, swap the base from the Toptube-Bag to the Fuel-Pack, and then I could have the bag I really want? 

Stay tuned............