MOTOPAK luggage review

I have found a few of these online, but none here, so I thought I would make one. I got a MOTOPAK tank bag in the mail today that I won on ebay. I got the GT27 (I think) its the 27 litre tank bag (2nd biggest, the 35 litre one is too huge) The price on the website is a lot more, but on ebay they seem to go for around 40 bones...cheap! Anyways, here are some pics and whatnot





As you can see it has the ubiquitous map pocket, and there is a little detachable pocket fanny pack type thing that holds bungee cords so you can strap it to your pillion, and a shoulder strap.



Here you can see the carry handle and strap to go around your steering mechanism. The little zipper pocket you can barely see opens up to a sewn in rain cover that actually looks like it would work, nice and thick nylon with a rubbery inside that covers the whole tank bag well.



Here is the inside of the bag when fully expanded, they say it can hold a full face helmet, and it does. You will have to trim the plastic piece they give you to use to reinforce the sides (the piece in the pic) but this is no problem.



Once added feature I didn't know about was that you can unzip the whole bag portion but leave the magnet base still on the bike:



and the magnet base portion has it's own map pocket, so you can use it as a little mini tank bag when you don't want to haul around a big bag. The main tank bag when unzipped has backpack straps hidden inside for convenient transport:



Anyways, they get a big thumbs up from me, the seller is in Canada, so no duty for cannucks, shipping was fast, and the price can't be beat, the magnets look to be strong as hell, and the mounting surface is rubbery so it will "stick" to your tank preventing sliding and scratching.

Oh yeah, they have nylon sport side bags in 60 and 90 litre sizes and they have top bags as well. Pending on how this performs on the bike I will be getting a set of the side bags for sure.

I thought I would do a follow up:

The bag is great, it really stays put, never moves at all at any speed. I got seriously rained on on saturday and got to use the rain cover which kept everything perfectly dry. It was a torential downpour that started as I was filling my gas and my girlfriend managed to take the cover out and slip it over the bag while I was filling. It took no time and kept everything bone dry despite the rain. The zippers are good quality and are set up so that it is easy to access the bag on the fly to grab sunglasses, or swap on the clear glasses with the left hand while riding or at a stop light. I have also on several occasions taken the main portion of the bag off and kept just the base portion and slipped my MP3 player into the map pocket.

Everything about the bag is great, but one thing, and I am not convinced it's actually even the bags fault. The places where the magnets stick to the tank seem to have developed some orange peel. It is in round spots directly under the magnets, so they have something to do with it, but if you followed my build thread at all you would know I did a first time paint job on my bike with duplicolor, which I painted in less than desireable conditions. I have since had a few issues with the paint on the tank in particular, so I think the paint itself is compromised, and the bag is just somehow exacerbating the issue. So that is my little caveat emptor, otherwise the bag is great, and I will certainly keep using it, and will likely get the side bags sometime in the future.

We've got the tank bag as well as the side bags and top bag. Good kit