Nomad Moto Rackless ADV Lugagge Review

For my upcoming Flinders Ranges tour with my brother I'd decided to purchase a proper ADV luggage carrying system. A new startup outfit here in Australia called Nomad Moto has just release their Strzelecki Edition of modular soft adventure luggage. 

What I liked about Nomad Moto was that they have a rackless setup that you can throw over the rear of your bike and then attach the panniers and top bag. It can be fitted both to racks or rackless. Pure simplicity and it can fit virtually any bike. It also carries the panniers low and forward of the rear axle keeping the weight down as low as possible, which is much needed for adventure riding.

I purchased during their startup sale in January this year, with the 80L Rackless Adventure Combo, which consisted of a 40 litre Roll bag, 2 x 20 litre panniers, the rackless base, 2 x bag liners, a heat shield for the exhaust pipe and a base plate if you already have racks. Once the rackless base arrived I got to fitting up the rackless system and pannier side bags to my 2020 Africa Twin.

Nomad Moto made this easy by making a fitting video of the rackless base and putting it up on Youtube. The video was about 20 minutes and it only took me a bit more than 20 minutes after a couple of rewinds to rewatch some bits I had it sorted in no time. You'll have it setup on your bike in less than 30 minutes from taking it out of the packaging, it's that easy. Thanks Nomad Moto.

Fitting the Heat Shield I had to use both hose clamps, as the stock pipe is so big that the largest clamp wasn't big enough. Still easy enough to do. I put it quite high up the pipe as I could see that the bag might touch the tip of the exhaust. Turns out its in the perfect spot, hardly touches anyway.

The fitting is really quite simple. There are 4 clips that clip each of the pannier bags to the rackless base, then there are 4 straps that strap the rackless base to your bike. Once attached and done up, the Roll bag attaches to the rackless base with 4 clips. It couldn't be simpler. Simply click on and click off. Brillant!

Nomad Moto make some bold claims about their modular adv gear. 

• Waterproof
• Heavy duty construction 1000D TPU material
• Gear that just works

Would it be waterproof, would it be tough enough, would it work?

I was a little concerned after fitting it up because I was taking brand new gear that I have never used, it is completely untested by me and I'm taking it into the harsh environment of the Flinders Ranges. Will it work or will it give me problems? Will the exhaust burn a hole in the right pannier bag? Who knows but I am about to find out.

After 3100kms of riding through the Flinders Ranges and then Barrington Tops and the 20 Creek crossings to Nundle I can confidently say that this setup is just as they advertised. Gear that just Simply Works. I can tell they did thorough product testing of the setup before release because it just worked. The 80 litre capacity was huge. I probably over packed slightly and still had extra room. We did road, offroad and some technical trails and the luggage worked perfectly through all of it.

The panniers are both light weight heavy duty material and are waterproof as advertised. How did I test the waterproofing? It didn't rain on our trip, but I did dump my bike in one of the creeks submerging the pannier. Oops, good test though. Luckily I didn't drown my bike in the process.

I have no affiliation with Nomad Moto. I purchased the gear and used it as intended. It worked great and I highly recommend it to anyone else who is thinking about using it for their adventure bike. I love it when stuff just works and this did just that without any issues.

You can get in contact with Nomad Moto at the following link. Nomad-Moto

Post Edit: 7-5-2025

If you are installing rackless  system to 2020 Africa Twin, remove the rear plastics. They are weakly made, with 2 small plastic hooks and 2 bolts. The weight of the bags on these will break the flimsy plastic pieces. I've taken the rear plastics off. 

Time for Mirrorless

I wasn't completely happy with the shots I got in Motegi at the Japanese MotoGP. It could have been the fact that I wasn't feeling well during the trip, plus the fact that we were perpetually living on alcohol for 4 days straight so didn't have a steady hand.

Checking the shutter count of the D500 its now up over 216,000 actuations. Nikon advise for this camera it's good for 200k, so its getting up there and still going strong. I'd been looking at mirrorless for a couple of years now waiting for a D500 replacement in mirrorless - a Z500(Z90) but Nikon don't seem to interested in making one for some reason.

I'd been watching prices of the other mirrorless models for some time(2 years). Then in Nov24 I saw that Nikon was having a Yellow day sale. I kinda scoffed as the manufacturer sales can be pretty rubbish, then forgot about it. Strangely, the night of the sale I awoke at 1am and couldn't get back to sleep, so I went on facebook and saw the sale add, clicked on it and saw that the Z8 was on sale for $1000 cheaper than any other ON sales price. It was stupidly priced and I couldn't say no, so went online right then and bought it. Still not sure why my bank didn't block a 5K transaction at 1:30am in the morning haha but glad they didn't, this time.

Next morning I looked at what else was on sale, I also got the FTZII adaptor so I could use my F mount lenses on the new Z mount camera. I also saw the Z 180-600mm F5.6-6.3 VR was on sale at stupid prices. So I was like .....

I think I payed a couple of employee's wages that week. Next day the Z8 arrived in the post. That was quick, but the lense and FTZ adaptor was going to be a few weeks wait. Damn. A brand new camera I can't even use because I don't have a lense that fits it. Plenty of time to set it up at least. It will be my first Full Frame camera, my other cameras have been crop sensor APSC with smaller sensors. I'll be interested to see what ISO this can handle in comparison to my older camera.

Whilst waiting for the lense to turn up I also ordered some screen protectors and 3M Skins from Aliexpress to cover the camera. They turned up from overseas in a few days but had to wait for the lense to turn up before I can put them on.

Finally after about 3 weeks the lense arrived and I can now put the whole package together, stickers fitted up. Did the lense friday night when the girls were at church and the body on saturday night after about 8 whiskeys, not the best idea.

Geoff told me that I need to get down to Bondi beach with that lense....

So not wanting to get arrested on my first day I decided a more conservative approach. I'll get to the beach one day. Lets' make some use of these 45 mega pixels......

A visit to Parramatta Park Australia day for the balloon glow event, it's only 10 minutes from my house so winning there.

F4.5, 1/125, ISO8000

I took my eldest daughter to the Hunter Valley airshow in February they had some magnificent World War 2 fighter planes and a F-35 Lightning. It was a surprisingly good event, well organised great food, when one display finished another was starting, transport to and from the airport was well organised with minimal waiting and the F-35 Lightning was the icing on the cake. That thing was Fast, Loud and spectacular. Lucky it was only blasting our eardrums and not dropping bombs on us.

F4 Corsair

P51D Mustang

P40 Kittyhawk

P51D Mustang

Wirraway

Spitfire

Paul Bennet's stunt show

There's been many triumphs and many failures. The setup menus on this Mirrorless camera is humungous compared to the DSLR I'm used too and especially the focusing system. There are so many settings its not funny. I kind of wish it was more simple. Sometimes pointing and shooting with a phone is more enjoyable, until you see the images that is.

The cropping ability of the 45mega pixel sensor is huge. I've cropped several images at 100% and they are still amazing. You have to be super disciplined with your technic. There are still many failed images as I wasn't using the correct focusing mode or motion blur. It's a huge learning curve again, but when you get it right it's an enjoyable one. Low light focusing the Z8 struggles more than the DSLR so that's a challenge doing the night racing events, but I shot at 6400 ISO and it was better than the DSLR at 2000 so these modern cameras have come a long way in the last few years.

I went out ot SMSP last weekend for the PCRA Festival of Speed. Rick was mechanicing for one of his racing mates, so I decided to drop in and see him and take a few more racing shots.

Ricks mate took out the 250GP class, so maybe Rick didn't have to touch much on the bike. I decided to leave him alone as me talking and distracting him, I could see he was going to forget to do something up properly.

Ironic that I got to a 45mp sensor and then downsize the images to 1mb for this blog, doesn't make sense right. Yeah, that's life, life doesn't make sense sometimes. But I can make these into 25mb jpegs which is pretty huge.

I'm pretty happy so far where I'm at with the Z8, it's a good camera and I need to learn how to use it to if full potential. At the moment I'm the weakest link for not being able to get the images I want so it's always a work in progress to try and get the best images I can. Got ASBK coming up in 2 weeks so hope I can get some good images at that.