I made a video to explain how to mount a G-funk bar clamp set up on your bike.
Hopefully, it is all pretty straightforward. There are a couple of important points
- Make sure the bolt threads into the cross dowel nut easily. If it doesn’t, adjust the cross dowel until it does.
- The nylon washers are spacers, you don’t have to use them all. If you mount the Strap Deck facing down (the ideal set up) then you may need them to clear your stems face plate bolts.
- The nylon washers need treated with care – they are very light and work really well for the intended purpose, but don’t treat them rough!
- The whole system needs very little torque to set. Less than 2nM – best advice is to snug the bolts up just until you feel them bite a little, then check for rotation. If it moves, snug it a wee bit more and repeat as neccessary.
- The bolts are button heads so the head does not rub on whatever you mount on the Deck. That means the hex key engagement is shallow – use a good quality 3mm hex key and make sure it is fully engaged.
- Consider using purple (222) or blue (243) Loctite on the bolts where they meet the cross dowel.
- The intended use of the G-funk set up is ‘ultralight’ bikepacking and for extended rides. As such, the weight limit is 1.7kg. Ideally, I would suggest less: *any* weight on the bars is detrimental to steering. If you need to haul winter-ready gear or heavyweight items such as Alpacka rafts, this is not the right bit of kit.
- I recommend using Voile Straps, as the rubbery material adds to the traction on the bag. The stretch is excellent at absorbing shock, too. The slots of Strap Decks are sized for normal Voile Straps,. but nano also work. You can use webbing straps or even velcro of course.
- Bottle cage spacing is nominally 64mm and the Strap Deck has oval holes to allow some fudge factor. That means you could use the G-funk clamps to mount a bottle cage under your bars as long as your stem is no wider than ~52mm.
Questions? add as a comment and I will get back to you!
drj0nswanderings 
Hey,
Here in picture 2 is my winter touring setup : https://www.instagram.com/p/CGAC1RSFq5-/ (Scotland in winter, I can’t get away without the sleeping bag)
My main problem with bar harnesses is that they make the bag sit too low. This causes the fork-mounted headlight to be a fulcrum, and the bag droops to one side or the other. In turn causing the straps to sit loose. The bag also hammers the headlight downwards on the bumpy off-road tracks.
I need a way to lift the bag up by about 5cm. The Strap Deck looks like it could solve my problem. What do you think, would it work fine with an 8l bag (~1kg) and possibly angled slightly upwards if needed?
Did you ever make a wider base plate, for bags with larger volume? Do you think an 8l bag is too big (in volume, not weight)? I’m thinking it might sort of slip off the base plate.
thanks.
I would think it would help with that. 8l/1kg is a good size for this sort of set up. the deck itself acts as a guide for the straps really, the ‘cup’ of the deck doesn’t need to be sizeable as the fact the straps can’t move means the load is locked down. I really recommend voile straps as the rubbery material is sticky and the stretch means you can really cinch down the dry bag. there are two widths of strap deck that work well and so if the bag is smaller diameter but wider a triple deck is the way forward. if a dry bag is bigger diameter then the deck area is the fulcrum for rotational movement and its more difficult to angle the bag so it doesn’t hit the head tube. if you tape up the head tube then it stops any abrasion. At some point I need to make some double ended dry bags for this sort of set up – there are some available from revelate and porcelain rocket…we’ll see! fire away if I can help with anything else?
cool, thanks.
I just ordered the Double Trouble Triple to try it out. The only front-end bag/setup I’ve found that works for fork-mounted headlights (on road bikes) is the classic Ortlieb (with map case). It’s rock solid but over the top for my use at the moment, so I’m glad I came across this as a possible solution.
I also see people with small frames suffering, and have to have complex strap lash-ups to keep the bag off the front tyre. Again, road bike setups. Same problem, just a little lift would really make life easier.
Multi-day, through the night/winter riding pretty much requires a dynamo headlight. I guess a niche of niche use case 🙂
Fingers crossed,
cheers,
dynamo headlights are great – I have a SON and its been amazing with a sine wave revolution. id say its taken years of trying to get to the stage im totally happy with how I pack the bike! kinda fun journey but definitely happier to ‘arrive’ than put up with a crappy/floppy/rubbing set up! https://www.flickr.com/photos/drj0n/13922696572/in/faves-19097652@N00/
thanks!
ha, snap! I slipped the sine wave into a piece of 700×32 inner tube with a few cm’s to spare, which keeps all the dirt/rain out of the USB socket. Then zip tied it under my stem, right out of the way.
Nice! That’s a great idea ;-)~
So, finally got everything together and the strap deck does exactly what I hoped. The brackets fit fine on drop bars, but only one way around because the brake/gear cabling. Did a quick shake-down ride on some of Edinburgh’s worst streets, and pretty stable.
An 8 litre dry-bag, clears the dynamo light by a good margin: https://www.instagram.com/p/CG7T00tldWC/
Great product, and a good minimalist alternative to front harness bags.
thanks.
That’s exactly what I’ve been struggling with. My setup is fine until I put the dynamo light on then it all goes wrong… I have a feeling that I;m doing damage to the light or at least stressing the bolt and mount more than is smart.
can you load up a picture sir can see if I can help?
I position the strap-deck facing the horizon (on all the pics it’s facing downwards, with flat-bar bikes), and that means the dry bag is lifted up. I also have the headlight bracket as flat as possible, so the light is lower.
Of course, depends on your frame size and the length of the head tube and spacer stack. For info, in the pic above, the distance from the top of my headlight to the top of the bars is 15cm. And that still gives a good gap between dry-bag and headlight.
[…] unfinished business, the route and kit decision had been informative and rewarding. I was using a G funk and Strap Deck bar roll system and it was so secure and light it never needed a second thought even […]
Great product! If more washers are needed for spacing the strapdeck away from the stem face plate, what size is required ?
thanks
thank you! the spacers are M5 aluminium and are about 12mm OD and 2mm thick. if you need more you’d also need longer mounting screws – the ones included are M5 flanged torx button heads at 40mm length.