For Around $1,000 You Can Transform Your Full Suspension MTB Into a Bikepacking Marvel

Folks, the name Tailfin may seem familiar if you often visit autoevolution. I covered some of their gear a few months back; a revolutionary cargo bag mounting system for cycles with a suspension fork, allowing you to push your bike's abilities to their edge. This time, I've decided to shed light on Tailfin's entire MTB cargo mounting lineup to show how far you can push that trinket of yours.

Before we get into the gear Tailfin offers MTB riders, let's look at the company to give us a solid idea of where things came from and where they may be going. Overall, Tailfin is a product design company made up of a bunch of cyclists, engineers, and enthusiasts. When you put those kinds of people in one place, you're bound to get something out of the ordinary. As the years went by, Tailfin became known for just that, an out-of-the-ordinary approach to bikepacking.

Sure, this crew creates mounting systems for an array of bicycle styles, but it's the MTB lineup that is most attractive because these bikes are typically the hardest to add mounts to. This brings us to the gear we'll be discussing today, everything you need to transform your MTB, full suspension or not, into a bikepacking marvel.

Now, most MTBs feature a front fork with suspension added to it, and the compression of a fork makes it rather difficult to mount any traditional racks to it. To work around this problem, Tailfin designed simple fork mounts that clip onto your slider or lower, allowing your fork to still complete its suspension cycles. Stainless steel options start at $40 (€38 at current exchange rates), and carbon mounts are $65 (€62). You will need to purchase a Cargo Cage for each leg, and that's an extra $50 (€48) a piece at least. Still. For under $200, the front of your bike is ready for your cargo bags.

At an MTB's rear, things get a bit trickier. If you own a hardtail, a bike with no rear suspension, then you have nothing to work about; just ensure you have rack mounts available and get handy. But, if you ride a full suspension monster, things get trickier. Mounting a rack to this sort of frame design could be considered impossible because of the travel the rear wheel on such bikes expresses; traditional mounts are out of the question.

To overcome this obstacle, Tailfin uses a sort of hybrid design to help the cargo rack compensate for the rear wheel's travel. Part of the design showcases a classic rack style with long legs mounted onto the dropouts, and added to the seat tube, you can see a sort of clip. It's this clip that allows the system to work its magic; it pivots as the rear of your bike takes a hit, simply pushing the front of the cargo bag underneath your saddle. It's a simple solution to an issue faced for years.

Again, you'll have to build up a complete cargo kit here too, but with alloy racks starting at around $250 (€240) and panniers as low as $80 (€76), with a solid $1,000, you should be looking at a full-suspension MTB that may look a little funny, until you outride all your friends and camp out under the stars. Why? Because you can, and Tailfin is here to help.

At the end of the day, Tailfin isn't the only crew that's worked out the mechanics of adding cargo racks to a full suspension MTB, but one thing at a time, please. Just a little something-something to consider if you want to extend your bike's abilities.