Ever get annoyed trail riding with a backpack? Whether you’re an enduro racer or just going for a short ride, it really can be nice to get that monkey on your back. 76 Projects has a number of gadgets offering more on-the-bike storage, and we’ve been using their Little Piggy mount & little Piggy Dry Bag to safely stow extra spares on our bikes, beyond the saddle bag and out of our jersey pockets!
76 Projects on-bike Little Piggy mount & Piggy Dry Bag pouch
Once you’ve shed the sweaty back & sore shoulders from an overloaded CamelBak, it’s hard to go back to riding with a pack on your back. Casual rides, even races become a game of how much kit you can stuff in a tiny saddle bag, or (gasp!) electrical taping a spare tube onto your frame.
True bikepackers don’t have a hard time figuring out where to pack more spares on the bike. But for riders simply looking to go for a quick spin on their cross/gravel/mountain bike, a regular saddle bag is often too small for a couple of tubes & tire levers, a couple CO2s & an inflator, and a proper multitool – the core essentials for most eventualities.
76 Projects has a range of simple on-bike storage solutions, and we’ve been riding gravel & trails with their Little Piggy mount & Piggy Dry Bag pouch.
Little Piggy & Piggy Dry Bag details
The £25 / $32.50 Little Piggy is a simple nylon mount that can be bolted to a set of bottle cage bosses or strapped anywhere on the bike with the included velcro strap. They give you a silicone strap (read: a black LiveStrong bracelet) to keep a tube, levers & a tool organized a bit. Then, a larger adjustable velcro strap secures all your kit to the mount.
It also has a couple of holes to press fit a quick link into the mount, which we haven’t really used much.
With the flat, pan head stainless bolts you need to mount it to bosses the Little Piggy kit weighs 54g. In the strap-on setup, the Little Piggy kit weighs 58g. (Beyond this standalone mount, there’s also the original Piggy that piggybacks the same style mount below a standard cage for more mounting options.)
The £10 / $13 Piggy Dry Bag is a small black welded-seam roll-top drybag to keep tools & tube clean and dry even in the harshest weather you can imagine (or ride in). The 52g drybag is sized to fit a 29er tube, CO2, levers & multi-tool (claimed 0.65L of on-bike dry storage.)
Riding with the Little Piggy & Piggy Dry Bag
There are a several ways to use these Piggies, and we started strapped-on with an enduro bike lacking bottle bosses, before bolting the kit up later to a cross bike for mixed-surface action. Either way, you can strap your spares directly onto the mount, but we liked the easier (and later cleaner) option of stuffing it all inside the drybag. Once stuffed, just roll down & clip the top shut, and simply strap the bag to the mount, which is shaped for a Perfect fit to the mount.
Starting on the curvy ol’ enduro bike though, to secure the Little Piggy we first insert the couple of rubber gripper pads into the back of the mount & secured it into an empty nook with the rubberized strap. This type of setup is where the Piggy is the most helpful – a bike without mounts and oddly shaped frame tubes. Install was quick & easy, then our kit was securely attached and protected from the weather.
On the mountain bike we packed in a 26×2.3″ tube, 2 tire levers & a multi-tool. While the packed drybag looked big at first, once on the bike it disappeared under the toptube and never gave it a second thought while riding. We’ve since ridden with this strap-on setup on local semi-technical trails, got some air time over the forest dirt jumps, and smashed through plenty of extra rooty & rocky trails. All done without any fuss from the Little Piggy or Piggy Dry Bag placement.
On the cross bike we bolted the Little Piggy on, in place of a standard bottle cage, for an even quicker install. Shaky mixed-surface cross bike dynamics are a bit different from the full-suspension ride, but still we didn’t have any issues.
On this bike, we put two 700c x 32mm tubes, tire levers & a multitool into the dry bag and strapped it to the bolted-on mount. With the big velcro strap on the Little Piggy, you can either strap the roll-top buckle of the dry bag tight or loop it through. We opted for the looped approach for the most part as an extra security measure, but the bag still never slipped down from the mount.
After half a year riding, the main Little Piggy strap did show a tiny bit of fraying of the nylon, from repeated strap-on MTB use with the velcro stuck to the nylon (see MTB pics above), but you can always cut that rubberized strap to length if you want. It never looked like problematic wear, and a quick pass close to the flame of a lighter melted the frays away.
Parting Piggy thoughts
Apparently due to climate change and our central Europe drought, we didn’t really put the dry bags’ 100% waterproofness to a ton of real world testing (fall finally has brought us cold & wet weather now, though). We have gotten it wet & muddy, and our gear inside stayed clean & dry. Plus, we can emphatically declare that it IS 100% dust-proof, also good for keeping your tubes and tools clean.
No matter which bike & which install we rode, the Little Piggy kept our kit securely attached, and the Piggy Dry Bag kept it all clean. Once on the bike, you’ll forget you are carrying it almost immediately (nice to have it off our backs!) And often times we’d just leave it packed on the bike and ready to go for the next ride. Our whole Piggy setup sells together as a kit for £32.50 / $42 (with free global shipping). It’s simple, easy enough to move from bike to bike, and we haven’t really found any fault with it. Now it will keep our tools & tube dry through the winter months!
