I wanted to add a bit of storage for my Hunter Cub, but not something which would get in the way when I wasn’t using it, and not something which would make it awkward when I’d be wearing a backpack, or getting a tent on the storage plate when needed, between me and a box.
After trawling container websites, I went for a 20litre folding box from local company Captain Stag. I even found one in black to sort-of match the bike. It folds down to about 7cm high, is quite thick and durable, and has latches on the top to stop it flying open.
Installation
I made a template sized to the bottom of the box made from a couple of sheets of paper taped together (no expense spared), and marked on the 4 * M6 / Pitch 1.0 positions.
I then taped this again to the bottom of the box and then slowly drilled the holes. By a stroke of luck, none of the holes impacted the thicker support struts and in the end were pretty much spot on which surprised me – the most I was out was about 0.5mm, so I slightly widened the hole, which wasn’t an issue.
I then cut a silicone mat to fit the interface size of the box to the plate, to try to prevent any scratching or vibration, and marked the screw holes in it too. After the above photo I trimmed the top part to stop it hanging down anywhere near the exhaust. I then mounted the box and mat, and it all lined up!
I used the 30mm M6 screws with a cut piece of silicone as a washer between the plastic box and the 25mm M6 steel washers to try to avoid the washers biting in the the plastic.
For the bolts, 30mm seemed to be about the correct length, since from the bottom of the internal storage area, to the actual bottom of the box was about 15mm. I’d previously tested tested that the side-walls could swing with the bolts in place since I’d seen a forum post where someone tried a similar thing with zip ties, and in that design they couldn’t collapse the box easily.
I’m mostly happy with the outcome, and it should work fine with a 20L dry bag for smal lgrocery runs and camping supplies, so objective completed.
The one obvious issue is that the four holes are more central, being designed for something taking up the whole plate, but it seems to be pretty sturdy and in some testing over the last weekend, didn’t seem to have any issues or vibration, so I’m going to mark this as DONE.
