You get what you pay for
I love truisms. You know, those statements that you find as you go through life that turn out to ultimately be rules to live by. One I have always liked is “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten” – Benjamin Franklin? Basically, you get what you pay for, and this applies to many things in life including motorcycle luggage.
Recently, I was given one of those very inexpensive Chinese aluminium top boxes you find on Aliexpress or Temu. At first glance it looks fantastic. The exterior has molded corner bumpers, there are rails to secure straps for extra luggage. Open the inside and the interior is beautiful – quilted fabric material with very nice pockets. The price is unbelievably low because it is made in China. It is also unbelievably low because it is built to a very low price.
I was fortunate to be apprentice- trained as a mechanical engineer. I spent the next three decades designing heavy duty equipment protector cases for Peli Products. Years spent as an engineer tends to equip you with a knowledge of what works over the short term and what will work for decades. Let me show you what I uncovered with the Chinese Adventure Top Case:
The Mounts
The Asian luggage (and some European Luggage for that matter) use thin stamped sheet metal for their over-centre locking mounts. The thickness of the metal in this case is 1.7mm. It is very light, but do you really think it is not going to bend and distort when subject to an impact?
The Lid Latch uses slightly thicker 2mm sheet metal, but I was dismayed to discover that the actual lock is held in place with a simple spring clip – see below. This not surprising as these locks are designed for office drawers and cabinets. Built for the office and not the road.
The actual shell of the case looks very nice but closer inspection will show that it is made from very thin aluminium sheet riveted together. There is lots of sealant at the seams and it is there for a reason – riveted structures tend to become loose over time and can leak. Before you point out that aircraft are typically rivetted, know that they use solid rivets placed into precisely machined holes and not blind pop rivets.
In comparison to a Caribou Case these Chinese-made cases are incredibly cheap. So why are our cases so expensive? Let’s start with the mounts:
We use a very heavy-duty compression latch that pulls the latch plate into the housing. The latch housing and the latch plate are both made from cold-rolled steel – 5mm and 3mm thick respectively. We then coat the parts with a polymer specially designed to absorb the vehicle vibrations and protect against corrosion. The lock fitted to the mount is IP67 rated for dust and water ingress. The lock cam is 5mm thick.
The cleats are made from 5mm cold rolled steel and slide onto CNC-machined stainless-steel flanges. Tying together the latch and cleats is a 3mm thick backing plate.
The shell of the cases is a 5mm structural foam polypropylene shell. This shell is made using a low-pressure injection molding process that uses a foam core to reduce the built-in stresses that typical high-pressure polymer parts. Cut open a Peli case and you will see microscopic bubbles present in the polymer wall. These tiny bubbles help keep the material density low but more importantly, aid flexibility and vibration absorption.
Finally, all the major parts used in the construction of the Caribou cases are made in Europe. There are some parts that we must import like washers, but most of the parts are made in countries like Germany, Belgium, France, Poland and the Netherlands. We are proud to support European manufacturing.