The thing is the only downside is you keep the bag on the rack and stop carrying stuff in your pockets. I dunno I don’t really care what other people do but I do find it funny that some have a hard time believing that having a front bag and not carrying stuff in your pockets is unpleasant.
What was ultimately very satisfying for me was seeing so many people who scoff at this setup adopting the little Rapha burrito bags for their road bikes a few years ago.
You don’t need low trail for a front rack. I’ve done plenty of long distance riding with overly stuffed porteur/rando bags on my medium trail rando bikes, and the handling is just fine. Admittedly, my idea of spirited riding works out to be a moving average of 15(and change) mph, but you don’t need low trail at all.
This 
For in between rides a Nitto M18 and mini bag on my regular ass Coffee Grinder is great too.
Definitely team Lowcash Chillmanski on just leaving the bag on the NM all the time (it’s bolted on anyway). Most of the time it has little more than a change of clothes and a robust flat kit in it. Nice when I want to pack a bunch of extra crap in it to bring home from work. Feels good man.
Swift still has some in their clearance section, not quite as cheap.
It would appear that you’re my kind of weirdo.
Yeah but you’ll get used to low/medium trail in about 5 minutes and you’ll get used to having a front load on them even faster.
I regret to inform you that, possibly for the first time ever, some random asshole on a bike forum has a passion project that’s ill-defined, weird, and possibly somewhat ill-advised.
I do not want a low trail rando box setup for reasons that make a ton of sense to me. I’m chasing a very specific thing that may or may not make sense. With any luck I’ll be posting about it in like a month.
Also I’m trying to use aerobars, which play poorly with a randobox
Yeah that’s fine but rear panniers on a tubus Tara front rack is also fine, especially once you get the weight adjustment right after the first couple rides and then never have to worry about it again. This is the voice of experience.
Take it up with Jan!!
(Someone please post the aero Jan photo)
sure, that might work fine too, I’m thinking that I’ll be carrying little enough that I can save my full size Ortliebs for another project
Hahah. Same reason I did all my long rides NOT on fop chariot.
I got a randobox to work with aerobars. It’s an acorn with ritchey slivers. Access to the box is blocked a bit but it’s far from unusable. No trouble with getting boosts, etc in and out while riding.
That big hyper-accessible 12 litres is very hard to give up once you’re used to it. Looking at the apidura aerobar specific thing where you can’t get into it while riding, a randobox looks pretty good. They’re heavy for sure but i do really like their low required brainpower to cubic litres ratio.
I also did a fast cold 200 last winter with a framebag and front rapha pencil case type bag. I just found the rummaging around looking for things difficult, though i guess you get used to it. A load that is trivial for a box (say nine Boost) is a big puzzle to pack and use if you have a bunch of little bags.
Like I actually want to get a transcontinental style nuevo randonneuse with zippy bags but these are the issues i wrestle with.
That depends on how much headtube+stem you’ve got and how tall the front bag is, yes?
Aerobars make all of this trickier. Depending on how the bag opens it’s either a giant pain in the ass or not. They also bump into feed bags
Rando box with integrated aerobars, like a giant mutated version of the route werks bag
Or sideways Jones bar bag between the antlers
Custom bag using the clipons for support
probably works, but on an aesthetic level, nothing looks worse than this.
Zip tie a piece of rain gutter to the bottom of the extensions to make a snack trough
@iwillbe whatever you end up with I’m interested. I, too, hate the feel of just about any bag anywhere on the bike and would like to do some CC touring.