Ortlieb Mud-Racer saddle bag: a review

I've been using this saddlebag for four or five months, on a road bike. Overall, it's an excellent bag, definitely better than any other saddle bag I've used before. But I was expecting truly great things from Ortlieb, and it let me down. Overall score: 4/5.

If you want deailed specifications, 3D views, etc., go here. I bought mine online, at wiggle.co.uk, I can't remember the price.

I love the looks and overall quality feel. This bag is basically a pod with a semi-hard shell, with two halves joined by a zipper. (Again, look at the pictures.) The upper half is protected by a silicone wrap that covers the zipper. The silicone piece, by the way, is not as shiny in real life as it looks in the pictures.

You will need to attach a plastic piece to the rails of your saddle. The bag comes with another mounting piece, that slides into the saddle piece. A locking mechanism prevents the bag from sliding back a forth. The bag is fairly easy to attach and remove, but that will depend on your saddle. (It's a bit annoying on my Arione, because there's very little space for my finger to push the locking button.) The saddle comes with a strap to tie it around the seatpost, which would prevent the bag from falling off in the event that it became detached from the saddle. (I removed the strap because I refuse to let a lowly velcro strap hug my aristocratic Thomson seatpost. The mounts that attach the bag to the saddle look secure enough and so far have been secure enough.)

Size matters. I own the middle size, which is actually called "small" by Ortlieb. (The smallest one is called "extra small" and the largest one is called "medium." And you thought that Starbucks was the only one trying to confuse you with its sizing...) In this bag I can fit at least: three road tubes, two or three CO2 cartridges, three tire levers, a chain tool, a spoke wrench, a patch kit, and two or three Allen wrenches, and I still have some room for additional things (small things, not a wallet or a thick cell phone, for example). I'm tempted to recommend that you buy the smallest one. But the capacity of that one is 24.4 cubic inches, as opposed to 42.7 for the one I have. Almost twice as much! And the difference in weight is only 30g. So it comes down to whether you mind the bulky appearance of the larger one...

As I said, I like the bag overall, but it has disappointed me in two ways. The biggest letdown is that it is not waterproof, in spite of Ortlieb's claims to the contrary, and the spotless reputation of its commuter bags. I can't figure out where the water gets through, but believe me, it does. On the other hand, I've never had a saddlebag that is completely waterproof, and the Mud-Racer does not perform worse than others. It's just that, if you were expecting to find your tools bone dry and rust-free at the end of a rainy day, forget it, pistolero!

Just recently I became aware of another flaw. The saddle, which had been almost completely silent till now, has started to rattle when I go over rough road. After inspecting it closely, I have discovered that the inner shell of the bag has cracked around one of the bolts that tie it to the mounting piece. The shell is fine around the other two bolts, and it looks impossible that the shell would eventually decouple from the mount and fall off. But, it rattles, and rattling noises from anywhere on a bike are so pedestrian...