Rally Bags Homemade

I was thinking of making a large rally bag for the back of my Intruder.

Ive been looking at them to buy and to be honest too much for my pocket but in our house we seem to be able to fashion lots of things lol

What I would like to know is. Does anyone know what is used for the stiffening! So to speak lol

I wont be using leather, at least not for the mock up as its expensive and difficult to sew. But I have material in the house but no idea what they use to make the basic stiff shape. Is it cardboard? plastic? any idea please?

Cheers and who knows if it works I will tape photos or video and post it here as a "How to"


Thanks guys

Many moons ago when I did  fair bit of radio controlled modelling you used to be able to get sheets of plastic card.  I imagine that would be a good material to use

I know nothing about this sort of project but would use either plastic card or thinly cut plastic for the shape, good luck and keep us informed on the way you go with this with positives and negatives as well. Thanks and good luck with your project, we will watch it with interest.

4 or 6mm plexiglas and a few right angled brackets approx 1" should give you a good start,you can always cover up with black vynil fabric easy to work with.One thing to look at is wieght,for your rack will only take a certain amount,unless you beef it up.You could also use aliminum  angle strips  approx 1"for the full length of your box for the joints,there are loads of ways,the good thing is when you do it yourself,it is to your own taste (bestoke) and to your own price.Try and make it detachable so you do not have to have it attached when not required,also when at rallies you can whip it off quickly and put it in your tent with all the gear still in it.I do it for fishing and find it excellant.I did use an old rack I had of a Triumph and modified it to fit,and with the extra brackets takes my fishing box easily.Good luck keep us informed.

Don't know if this helps Tigger but we just bought some leather luggage for my wifes VL125. The panniers & top box are both stiffened with 2mm plastic card and that together with the leather makes them quite stiff, certainly enough that they don't lose their shape even when completely empty.

I'm going to put a link up in the "Retailers" section for the company I bought them from as the price and service was excellent. The company is in Poland but the carriage charges and delivery time was absolutely spot on !

Hey, leather isnt neccessarily expensive.... I made a kind of dashboard pocket in leather for my screen, and spent a couple of weeks scouting Ebay, and eventually picked up a nearly new black ladies coat for £6 (got a bit of a funny look when I went collect it.... it was a size 12 and I'm not!!!!).

I stiffenend that with foamex... a kind of semi rigid plastic used by signmakers. Maybe you could ask around.

Heres a link to my project in case it helps...