Rogue Panda Full Suspension Frame Bag Review

With a number of full suspension bikes not being optimized for water bottle carrying, John reached out to his local-ish bag makers at Rogue Panda to get a custom frame bag (starting price of $195) made for his Cotic FlareMax bike. Read on for a step-by-step review of how the Rogue Panda custom frame bag process works!

Rogue Panda is a Flagstaff-based bag maker that offers high-tech, precision-fit, full- or partial-frame bags. The brand’s bikepacking handlebar harness and saddle packs are the best in class. My experience with Rogue Panda mainly relates to the various touring bikes I’ve had them make bags for. Remember those sweet Monsoon Camo bags on our custom Radavist-edition Mosaic bikes? Rogue Panda did those.

When I received a Cotic FlareMax hand-me-down late last year from the brand’s owner, Cy, I wanted to fix the water bottle issue I had with the bike during my review. The FlareMax has a single-bottle boss, but it’s dead center on the top tube. To get a big bottle and a small bag in there, I have to use a Wolf Tooth B-Rad 3-bolt base.

That Wolf Tooth Plasmatic cage looks perfect on this build!

Thank god for Wolf Tooth! But it’s not an ideal solution, particularly when I like to use a Revelate Nook bag to hold my riding essentials. These days, I only wear a backpack or hip bag on a bike ride when I carry a camera, so I like to have everything I need on my bike and off my body.

Then it dawned on me: Why not just get a custom frame bag made to take advantage of all this dead space? My hope was that the frame bag would give me more space for a jacket or more food and come in around the same weight as the B-Rad base, bottle cage, and Nook bag.

I contacted Nick at Rogue Panda – customers will simply complete this step through the brand’s web shop portal – and asked if he could do it. His response is the same every time I send him a query: “No worries!” But how does a bag maker offer custom-fit bags if its customers aren’t there in person?

Panda Vision

Nick came up with a solution for having clients all over the world: Panda Vision! The way it works is you attach a ruler – be it a straight edge, measuring tape, or fabric tape – to your frame and shoot a photo with a telephoto lens. If you don’t have a quiver of birding glass like I do, you can simply use your iPhone; just make sure you’re about ten to fifteen feet back, bend over a bit to get parallel to the frame, and zoom all the way in. You want your camera to be level with the frame to avoid any perspective shift.

This flattens the frame, omitting any distortion found with a wide-angle lens. From there, make your bag selections online using Rogue Panda’s webshop. You can select fabric, patterns, custom patterns, attachment method (hook/loop, bolt-on, or lace-up), and all sorts of add-on, a la carte options.

When you’re done, attach your Panda Vision photo to your check out, pay and wait! If Nick has any questions, someone from Rogue Panda will reach out.

Shock Clearance

You can skip this if you don’t have a full-suspension bike. When I asked Nick about cramming a bag in every bit of space on the Cotic, he made a quick suspension model of the DropLink suspension path to optimize the bag size and ensure the rear shock’s path wouldn’t interfere with the bag. Neat, huh?

Getting the Fit Right

Once Nick receives the Panda Vision drawing, he’ll make a scale .DWG file of your bike’s frame bag space and create a vector image of the bag’s profile. He’ll then print out this vector file 1:1 on a plotter, cut it out, and trace the outline onto the fabric to be cut out. From there, Nick hands over the pieces to one of Rogue Panda’s talented sewers for production.

Final Product and Installation

Then, wait for Rogue Panda’s production queue emails that deliver your bag’s status, including a shipping notification! This entire procedure takes about two to three weeks in the “slow season,” but that time will change fast once people start making plans for their summer outings. So, if you have a bike tour or a bikepacking race coming up and you want a custom framebag from the pandas in Flagstaff, get on it!

I’ve found over time the bag will relax and I can pull it tighter to the seat tube, omitting that small gap…

I chose the ultralight Ultra 200X gravel grey fabric to match the silver and purple sizzurp theme I have going on the FlareMax. As for the final weight, this Rogue Panda frame bag weighs 8.2 ounces, while the Wolf Tooth B-Rad 3-bolt, bottle cage, and Revelate Nook bag weighed 6.3 ounces. Not that I’m a weight weenie, but I figured it’d be relevant information.

When designing the layout of my bag, I wanted as few straps as possible, utilizing the cable guides and bottle bosses for attachment. I sent Nick this drawing (which is totally overkill) and told him to omit or add straps as necessary. Can you spot which strap he cut from the design?

The final product is perfect! I can fit two 26 oz bottles in this bag, along with all my tools, and I even have a map pocket on the non-drive side for my phone. It’s a very utilitarian upgrade for a full-suspension bike. Frame bags aren’t just for cyclo-tourists, bike campers, or bike pack racers; they are allies on any bike.

I like keeping my body free of bags unless I’m carrying a camera and a big partial frame bag like this helps make that a possibility.

Designing a custom bag that fits every available inch on a full suspension is of the utmost importance, and Nick and his team at Rogue Panda do a bang-up job every time! There’s no bike too weird for them, either! Roll on over to Rogue Panda today to check out the brand’s custom frame bag builder.

Pros