Hacking my Carradice Carradura rear panniers

 Before I start on the Carradice panniers, I would like to say that I have actually just made a pair of panniers, and I'm quite pleased with them, but need to make a couple adjustments before I reveal them here. 

These are the Carradice ones - 

I bought these panniers about 3 years ago. I'd read some reviews and thought they looked a good buy for the money, which was £58. I intended to use these mainly for touring on my Koga. I have a pair of very old (25 years perhaps) Karrimor panniers, which are excellent, and which I have also used for touring. I can't fault these panniers. I suspect they might be front panniers but when I bought them I knew very little about such things - I just bought them because they were reduced and were better than the ones I had at the time. They stay on my lovely old Trek, which I now mainly use for shopping, but here they are on the first tour I did in 2016 -

I have also had, I'm almost ashamed to admit, two pairs of Ortlieb panniers, both of which I sold without hardly using them. The first pair were front panniers and I realized I just didn't need them - I was never going to take luggage front and rear on my future tours. Then I bought a rear pair but I just couldn't get them to sit on my bike properly - I wonder still if I wasn't doing something wrong but they just seemed to hang down. I also severely missed having outside pockets, so I sold that pair too. I do now wish I'd kept the front ones and used them on the back, despite them not having outside pockets. Anyway.... back to the Carradice ones.

The HUGE problem with these was that when you went to flip back the lid, it just didn't flip!! You either had to hold it out of the way with one hand, which made getting things in and out awkward, or somehow fasten it back temporarily. It was stiff due to piping at the sides, and also if you put stuff in the pockets on it that made it even worse. Another thing I disliked intensely was the black interior and black drawstring closure at the top, as it made the interior very dark. These two things added together drove me nuts! That was what actually drove me to make some (as well as seeing some that someone had made in a DIY Outdoor Gear group I'm in on Facebook) but then I thought - despite their drawbacks the Carradice ones are too good to waste. So I hacked them.

This is what I did - 

I cut where the lid was joined on each side, where the arrows are. I then completely opened up the lid by unstitching all the binding and removing the very stiff piping (photo below, again where the arrow is) and some other excess material which was making it stiffer. Then I had to sew it all back together again! This was quite tricky as getting it close enough to the machine was difficult. It is a bit of an untidy job as a result but I couldn't do it any better. Obviously there are now gaps where the lid no longer joins the bag, but it still covers the top of the pannier when closed, and for waterproofness I will just use the separate covers that come with them anyway.

Stiff piping

Piping gone! I stitched this seam down by hand later.

Then I cut off the drawstring bit at the top (should have taken a before photo but I expect you can guess what I mean) and sewed on the yellow bit you can see. This came from an old tent. Relining the inside completely would have been impossible. The alternative would have been a whole separate bag, but I knew that it being loose inside would annoy me, so this was my alternative. 

I went out yesterday with them on the bike and I was over the moon to be able to flip the lid right back!! And what with that and the yellow drawstring bit I can see inside them so much more easily. 

I have to say that I would never buy these panniers again. That's the trouble with buying online - you can't really tell quite what you're getting. I would rather pay more and get what I really want. But having said that, my hack job has vastly improved them (to me anyway!) and I will now be a lot happier using them.

Have you any tales of hacking your bike luggage?