Question from a newbie

[Fluff]

Hi all
I'm a long time cyclist, new to this forum and new to bikepacking.

I have a problem that I'm hoping some of the more experienced bikepackers may be able to help with

Been bike touring before but our first mountain bike - bike-packing/bothying experience coming up.

I have a couple of Wildcat Mountain Lion handlebar harnesses. I've attached the first one to my bike and got it positioned in place. I've mounted a sleeping bag in an (Alpkit) drybag to it

It presses against the brake hoses ....horribly - to the extent that I'm almost certain it will damage (kink) the hoses. (I'm reasonably competent as far as 'bike-spannering' goes so this isn't just a naive opinion).

Options seem to be
i) Ride as is & risk damaging the hoses.
ii) ride with the brake levers almost vertical.

There isn't really mid point between these 2 options - as in roatet the levers partially - even with the levers vertical, the brake hose exit points from the levers is still being squashed a bit by the harness

The first option sounds potentially expensive, possibly dangereous and we've got 2 weeks of (holiday) biking ahead of us so I don't really want to risk damaging the hoses
The second just looks pretty dangerous. Even on a non-too challenging trail, I wouldn't really want my levers like that.

I wondered if it was just something peculiar to the Avid Elixirs on my bike, but have just married the harness up to several different bikes with couple different lever types and set ups - XT levers (old and new) & Avid Juicys and the problem is the same

Any tips?

[Iowagriz]

Hard to tell without a picture, but I can say that with my Revelate Sweetroll and my Elixirs, I had to move my levers to be mostly horizontal in order to avoid terrible bending and still have use.

[wahday]

I agree that it is hard to wrap my brain around the specifics of your problem without a visual, but this is a common issue with hydraulic brakes cables that are not as amenable to kinking or pinching. You might want to take a gander at this thread:

http://www.bikepacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=8271.0

It discusses making your own handlebar "standoffs" out of PVC piping or similar materials. The objective is to move the mounted bag a little away from the handlebar. This creates a little gap between the roll (or drybag if using no roll) and the bar. If the distance is set right, the cables can run in that gap without much pinching or damage. Check the thread out to see what I mean. There are a couple of good pics in there that illustrate it well (and there are two pages, so make sure to look at both). And you may already have materials laying around you can use for this.

Hope that is helpful. Personally, I now use a Jones Loop H-Bar which eliminated this issue for me. Prior to that I used mechanical brakes so the pinching was less of an issue. The problem I had in that case was that activating the brake lever rubbed it against the bag and could potentially wear a hole in a drybag or stuff sack.