THE NEW TAILFIN FRAME BAGS AND HOW THEY ARE DEVELOPED WITH RIDER INPUT

TAILFIN finally released their range of frame bags for bikepacking after a 3 year development process. As a member if the tailfin R&D team I have been testing various prototype bags over the past few years.

In this video I run through the new production bags and also show some insight into my input into the development process.

For more information on the Tailfin frame packs check out their website here:

Frame Bags

You can find the tail fin frame bag fit guide here:

Frame Bags

A big thank you to the brands that support me:
Mason Cycles – https://masoncycles.cc
Hunt Bike wheels – https://www.huntbikewheels.com
Albion Cycling – https://www.albioncycling.com
Tailfin Bikepacking equipment – https://www.tailfin.cc/?v=79cba1185463
Enduro bearings – https://cycling.endurobearings.com
Styrkr – https://styrkr.com

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https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jibbett887

this is a public service announcement production versions of the tailin frame pack are now available if you’ve been watching my videos over the last couple of years you’ll know firstly that I am supported by tail I’m part of that R&D Division and you’ll also know that I’ve been running prototype frame packs and uh it’s one of the things I’ve had the most questions about on my bite checks and things like that um so I thought I’d just uh run through the the production bags CU they’re actually really cool there’s some really cool features on there and I’ve had a bit of a an an input into the the design and the development um so I’ll run you through the bags now and then I’m going to head home and show you some of the prototypes and show you the kind of process that’s involved in in bringing these kind of products to Market um from a rider perspective so these these new frame bags from tailin they come in two types they’re predominantly designed for Road and gravel bikes as you can see I’ve got mine on my Mason Boker um this is a a size XL UH 60 cm just for reference and sizing um and there’s two types there’s the the wedge which is this uh this is the larger kind of wedge bag which basically is designed to sort of be in the front of the frame and sit halfway or you know 3/4 of the way down the top tube and then there’s the more traditional half frame pack which will fill the whole Gap here now I’ve been running some half frame packs in development um on various bikes and um yeah it’s all kind of helped feed into into these these final designs now the cool thing about the packs is there’s nine different sizes so in theory you should be able to find a pack that fits your bike perfectly uh and the Cates down to the smaller frame sizes as well there’s actually a um a frame sizing guide on the on the tailin website you can put your bike in and then it gives you a few options as to what will fit so hopefully you should be able to get a nice snug fit now one of the the the standout features of the tailin packs it’s not just the frame packs but you you know from if you’ve got top tube pack or like the fork bags is the V mounts and the rubber straps velcro straps are a thing of the past now they hold it super tight onto the frame there’s no rubbing since I’ve been running tail fin I’ve not worn any paint off my bikes in the past I’ve had to have frames resprayed just destroyed it with with bags rubbing and the velcro straps rubbing but yeah that’s kind of eliminated the problem with with the the vmount straps as already mentioned this is the largest of the wedge sizes just to give you a bit of a reference this is this is the things I have in here uh so I’m out for a bit of a gravel ride obviously spring in the UK conditions are very changeable um so what I’ve got I’ve got an albian folding Gil I’ve got one of the lightweight albian insulated jackets and a albian rain jacket and all of that fits in quite comfortably um also got a tube in there uh for like repairs in case I have a puncher set of overg gloves um and there’s still plenty of room in there as well the other really cool feature I don’t know if you can quite see it is that uh there’s little velcro straps to hold your pump so the pump is attached to the top of the bag and doesn’t rattle around now there’s been a lot of work on some of the smaller details uh Zips being a prime example of these so I’ve had various different uh ZIP Types on the on the prototypes I’ve had over the last couple of years uh and they finally settled on this one um I think it’s pretty much gone full circle you know a zip is a zip but they’ve they’ve basically gone for the really nice sort of reliable one now the other cool thing about these bags uh which is relatively unique is the internal structure so there’s an internal structure on the top which which holds the um like the frame the bag in place in the frame and there’s also you can just about see down here it’s a it’s basically a strip of carbon and that stops the bag bulging out so so when you’re riding along it doesn’t you know you don’t get too much in the way of knee rub um and also it takes quite a bit of pressure off the zip so when you as you inevitably do overpack your bag um you’re not as likely to to burst a zip um and I’ve not broken a zip so far with all the prototypes I’ve used and obviously the Design’s got more and more refined you know as it’s got Clos to production so yeah really nice feature um and you know really really useful there is also a well let’s call it a mat pocket on the on the non-drive side of the frame bags really useful um just to put things in each sort of hand so I recently used this um I was guiding in the Canary Islands had this on my road bike have my passport and things in there no problem today I’ve just got a multitool um and my Dino plug um so yeah I just like to keep things in here which you know you’re going to need sort fairly regularly and you don’t want to be digging around in the main pack to find so yeah that’s the uh the mat pocket another little feature there is actually a little Port here so you can use that for a cam back hose um or Dynamo wiring depending on you know what you what your need is um so that just sits on the front there um and then is is held away from the frame by the the lower V mount um so yeah makes things nice and neat so that’s the details of the new frame packs I’m just heading home now and uh once I get back into my garage I’ll dig out some of the prototypes uh and then you can see kind of how the um the development process has worked so here we are back home in the garage after the ride and I’m just going to show you some of the Prototype bags uh that I’ve been testing over the years and these all gone to inform the production stuff so yeah hopefully it’s kind of interesting to see see how these things come to fruition so I first started on the tailin R&D team it was probably 10 end of 2021 into the 2022 season um and 2022 one of my big goals was T divide um so I wrote it on on this Mason in search of behind me and the um so the first bag we made um was with that in mind so it’s custom bag to fit that frame and this is it here um so this was one of the very very very first frame bags that that tailin made and it’s kind of um it’s not anything special it’s it’s a bit rough around the edges as you know you’d expect from any early prototype and yeah it’s it’s fairly basic I guess the main feature about these was this is one of the first bags to have the V mounts on um so so the early testing was just making sure that the the V Mounts work well which they did um they weren’t even released on any other products at that time and also there was a lot of um like Zip Zip pullers seem to be a big Focus early on for some reason probably not the the most important thing but um as you can see I’ve got like three three different types of zip puller on there um so yeah all of that kind of feedback kind of went into um you know future Generations um these these Zips these were waterproof Zips I didn’t have any issues with them um obviously I’m not the only Rider on the R&D division um so there were a few kind of issues with early Zips and um you know all that sort fed back into creating the product so yeah that is the the frame pack number one so the next iteration of frame pack uh was this one here now this is the one I actually did take on the tour divide in 2022 unfortunately that didn’t go too well for me I’m pretty certain I had covid on the flight so uh I got a week in and um couldn’t breathe the altitude so I ended up scratching um but even so this this bag um I mean did half a divide and my prep races um and I’ve used it I used it on my ISO um because it’s it’s a custom fit for it um you know it’s it’s done a lot of mileage and it’s it’s really held up well so the next sort of evolution from that original prototype you can see now that the the carbon struts which you see in the production bags they’ve started to get introduced and this was a bit of a game changer as I said earlier in the video it just helps kind of keep the the pack from bulging out too much especially when you have a packet is is very common when you’re on a bike packing trip you just you know keep pushing your luck with with stuff in your bag and I’ve I’ve split numerous zips on um on other brands um not yet done so on tailin which is encouraging so yeah that started to be introduced and also you can see the the top is now got the um some structure in it it’s not the frame that is found in the production ones uh that came with a loot of late prototype um but it’s kind of a one piece section in there and you can see the the V mounts are still in there again these are early ones uh the newer ones have a bit more kind of forward and backwards movement so actually you can pair them up with uh top D bags really easy and use the same straps um and you can see evolution of Zips as well so we’re starting to look a little bit closer to the um the production ones now with the zip zip puller I mean these are rough 3D printed models um but you know I’ve used that extensively when it’s 2:00 in the morning you’re pulling on your zip um you you you kind of really get to test them and see if they really work well so yeah so that was the the second generation of uh frame bag the other thing that started to get introduced on this generation was the hydration and Dynamo cable port on the front there um now it’s not something I I tend to use um but you know a lot of riders do so this was the you know the stage at which that started getting developed as well um so yeah kind of gradually morphing into the product that is is launch today now it is worth noting that you see a lot of R&D Riders riding these these white bags uh so this dyema um the production bag isn’t dyema um but yeah for some reason we we get the nice fancy stuff so all this stuff is made down in Bristol um so they they custom make the stuff in house I visit probably two or three times a year it’s really good to sort of chat to the product team feedback take all my bags down there um show them you know what condition they’re in normally there’s nothing really to report they’re holding up pretty well um and also I kind of empty my brain of weird ideas um which kind of then gets fed back in and there’s loads of really cool stuff that I’ve I’ve kind of been testing and working on you know as well as the other R&D Riders so um yeah it’s really cool to kind of actually be part of something and then then see something go through the whole process uh to production which is kind of the reason I wanted to show you in this video so this is the third step in the evolution and this is actually a frame bag I’ve used a hell of a lot um so it fits my my gravel bike that I showed you earlier my road bike um so I’ve used this on the road bike for like Japanese Odyssey I’ve done race around Rwanda on the gravel bike various kind of big one day trips on the gravel bike um so this has had a hell of a lot of use and it’s stood up really well and as you can see we’re looking you know closer towards the shapes that that you can see in the half frame bags um obviously this is custom but um the you know all the frames kind of are measured up and um go to the database so the tailin can kind of tailor the frame or the sizes of bags to match people’s frames so as you can see it’s got all the features and and they’re kind of in in more of production positions now got the port on the front there got the carbon in the on the inside um more of an exoskeleton in the top uh so that’s kind of saving a little bit of weight but keeping it rigid um still on the original um V mounts uh these these like the the latest version do have a bit more slid room uh as I mentioned before there is a different zip pullar on there um but I think by this point it’s settled on the the production one that we have now um so yeah really durable again the the fancy white dyema obviously production is going to be black yeah really cool uh and I’m looking forward to getting onto the production bags for all my stuff uh now as I said earlier the the bags that are in production at the moment are predominantly Road and gravel but you may noticed some of these mountain bike sell bags on um various bikes so this is the one I’ve used for Highland Trail Silk Road I’ve just did atas Mountain race on it um so this is customed for my Mason frames and um at the moment there there isn’t um well there isn’t mountain bike one specifically available however what would I say on that is watch this space but there are more features now on this bag that are now on the production bags so you can see here we’ve got the um sort of production well certainly prototypes of the production V mounts now with that extra slid room on there the zip toggles are getting closer and cl closer to production and basically the whole process has been refined um so this would have been about after 18 months of prototypes um and it’s you know it’s a really nice really nice bag um you know the events I’ve done on it um you know it’s it’s still in really good Nick obviously it looks a bit dirty with a white fabric um but you wouldn’t see that on the black stuff so yeah really pleased with it and um yeah happy to happy to be running the tailin stuff so there we have it that is the new tailin bags um check out the tailin website for all the information and pricing and all that stuff um yeah I hope you enjoy the video hope it was informative um just giving you an insight into into how these things are made and yeah catch you in the next one thanks for watching