Servicing Vario Panniers

[MartinB]

After 20k miles my vario's had gotten very stiff to expand and contract. I'd tried spraying the parts I could see with Silicon lubricant, which only lasted a short time. So I decided to strip them down to find out how to sort the problem.

Here's how it went.
The left pannier is a bit more of a fiddle due to the exhaust guard.
Pic 1 undo the 3 screws holding the exhuast guard from inside the pannier.
This allows access to the three torx head screws that hold the expanding gearing in the pannier itself, obviously you need to remove these front and back of the pannier (pic 2)

 

[MartinB]

Part 2

Pic 1.
Here's the pannier split in 2 I cleaned the gearing with brake cleaner although there wasn't much grime in there.

Pic 2.
The groove in the outer clam shell seemed to be holding the majority of road grime and muck (not much, but enough to make the two sections rub together) So, with some more brake cleaner and a rag wrapped around a flat blade screw driver i cleaned the groove.

Pic 3.
I sprayed the rubber seal on the inner clam shell section with Silicon lubricant and then re-assembled the pannier. DONE one smooth sliding expanding pannier. Rinse and repeat for the R/H pannier

Warning

When re-assembling the two half's of the pannier, make sure you get the red stem for the release tab the right way around. You know the one that you lift to release the box from the bike. Otherwise you can't 'lock' the box onto the bike again and you have to take the damn thing apart and rebuild it all over again

The whole job took me about 45 mins for both panniers

 

[Ravenbyrne]

Thanks for that Martin


Did my own today and they are now moving very smoothly

 

[mr badger]

Will do this for my topbox. Thanks Martin.

 

[swissrob]

be very careful around the exhaust guard - its razor sharp and will cut you like that bloke off masterchef!

 

[sbakas]

For which model are the panniers shown in the images above?

I am asking because my panniers (on an F650GS TWIN) do not have the metallic bit on the external side. Should they had it?

 

[Nice 'n' Fat]

As this is the 1200 GS section I would say they're probably for a 1200 GS

 

[MIKE R]

Many thanks for this thread, MartinB.

I've just followed it to free off a sticking mechanism in my pannier.

Mike