ExNotes Review: Viking Momentum Tail Bag

Two or three years ago Joe Gresh and I provided product reviews on our Viking motorcycle jackets.   We like them a lot and you may have noticed that Viking advertises on our website.  Both jackets have given us good service and I’ll provide links to those reviews at the end of this blog.

The topic today is the Viking Momentum small street and sportbike tail bag.  I’ve found bags like this to be ideal for my travels through Baja and elsewhere.  I used similar equipment on my KLR 650 and I found that I could carry more than I needed in Baja and elsewhere.  Gresh suggested the Viking bag and I ordered one.  It arrived quickly and it was well packaged.

After taking the Viking bag out of the box, I put it on my Royal Enfield.  The size was about perfect.  What I especially like is that I can swing my left over it when getting on and off the motorcycle.  With larger tail bags, getting on and off the motorcycle becomes a problem, but not with the Viking bag.

The Viking bag has a hinged lid and lots of mounting points.  I’ve not used the slotted deal on top of the lid yet.  It looks cool.  The bag also has a carrying handle.   It’s a well-designed and well-built motorcycle accessory.  I examined the bag closely and I am impressed with the build quality.  I could not find any defects and no indications of sloppy workmanship.

Before I installed the bag on my Royal Enfield, I opened it to see the interior.  The Momentum comes with a rain liner, a set of straps, and spare nylon web bungee cord attach points.  You can rivet these to the bag (in addition to the four already present) or you can use them as replacements if the ones on the bag detach.

The Viking Momentum bag has four Velcro straps on the bottom.  These pass under the seat, stick to each other, and secure the bag to the seat.

To mount the bag, I took the seat off the Enfield.  The Enfield and Viking designs makes this easy.  On the Enfield, the ignition key unlocks the right side panel, it comes off, and that reveals a cable pull button that unlocks the seat.  Easy peasy.

Once the seat was off the bike, it was a simple matter to mate the Viking Momentum’s mounting straps underneath.

I first mounted the seat so its carrying handle faced forward, as shown below.  Then I reversed it.  I’ll say more about that in a bit.

The Viking bag has two zippers around the exterior.  The upper one is for the lid; it provides access to the bag’s interior.  There’s another zipper around the bag’s base; unzipping it allows the bag to expand and approximately doubles its volume.

I thought it would be cool if the expanded bag would hold a full-face helmet, but it did not.  That’s okay.  If I put my helmet inside, there wouldn’t be room for anything else.

There are a couple of zippers inside the Viking bag.  One is on the bag’s inner walls.  The other is on the underside of the lid.  You can store things in the lid compartment like your phone, a map, a Baja tourist visa, your BajaBound insurance paperwork, and other stuff.

The Viking Momentum includes a rain liner.  It packs up compactly.  You can keep your stuff dry in the rain liner inside the Momentum bag.  It’s a nice touch.

With the Momentum bag’s handle facing forward, I didn’t like how the bag was positioned on the seat.  It provided adequate room, but no extra room.  The Enfield has a hard seat.  I’m getting older and my butt is aging along with the rest of me.  I need extra room to move around on a motorcycle seat, and with the bag mounted with the carrying handle forward I didn’t have any extra room.  I also noticed that the base zipper (the one you unzip to expand the bag) pull was digging into the Enfield’s Naugahyde surface.  I didn’t want to disrespect the Nauga that gave up its hyde for my seat, so I turned the bag around and moved it more toward the rear.

When I did that, the Velcro straps are still captured by the seat’s base mounting points (the bag won’t slide off), and I eliminated the zipper-to-Naugahyde interference.

Cosmetically, the seat looks great in either orientation.

I once led a bunch of guys on a short Baja weekend ride about 15 years ago.  One had a Harley, he was new to motorcycling, and he had never done an overnight ride.  We met at a Denny’s before heading for Mexico, and when he rolled up on his Electra-Fried, he and that Harley looked like they escaped from the opening scene on the old Beverly Hillbillies show.  The only thing missing was Granny in her rocking chair.  He told me his saddlebags and his Tour Pak were stuffed, and he also had two or three gym bags bungied to the bike.   This was a weekend trip to San Felipe, about 130 south of the border, and we were only staying two nights.  My KLR had a medium tank bag and nothing else (and that tank bag also held a camera).  “I’m ready for a week down there,” my friend announced from his adventure Glide.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve got my Nikon and a spare set of underwear, so I guess I’m good for a week, too.”

I guess I shouldn’t make fun of that guy.  I get it; he was at the front end of the learning curve, and we’ve all been there. I once took an overpacked Harley into Baja, too.  We were going to Cabo, taking the ferry to mainland Mexico, heading down to Guadalajara, and coming back through Sinaloa cartel country (you can read about that trip here).  I did not yet know about the virtues of traveling light and good ballistic nylon gear like the Viking Momentum bag.

The point is this:  You don’t need to carry a lot on a motorcycle trip (even if you write a blog), and you can get a lot of stuff in the Viking Momentum.  I like it.  The Momentum tail bag is a good deal; on the Viking website it retails for $99.99.

So there you go:  My take on the Viking Momentum tail bag.  It’s a good thing to have for your motorcycle but don’t take my word for it.  Listen to what Bernadette has to say.

I mentioned above I would provide links to the Viking motorcycle jacket reviews.  Here’s mine, and here’s Joe Gresh’s.

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