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My Hepcos are about 3 years old, been to Greece and Portugal including most places in between, no problems to date with panniers rack or frame.

Back in the day, I used Craven Panniers, mainly because the panniers and the racks were much more robust than Krausers, which would not have stood up to world traveling.

I am pleased to hear that they are better. Not only was world travel out of the question, they didn't hold up to travel around California. The rack was only big enough to hold a peanut butter sandwich and it still broke easily.

By far the strongest rack was the one by Reynolds in Salt Lake City. Its downfall was that it was quite a bit stronger than the rear frame section, so it broke instead of the rack. You can't win.

Duane Ausherman wrote:Unless the Hepco is far stronger than the quite similar one from BMW (Krauser) then it will fall apart with any load at all.

Interesting. I've been using the BMW/Krauser 1 piece frames on my '76 R75/6 and '77 R100/7 for a combined total of something approaching 20 years now. Not a single problem. Perhaps I've been lucky--so far. Of course I'm a candy ass rider--as opposed to an iron butt rider.

I have no experience with the Hepco Becker offering other than noting that it looks identical to the BMW/Krauser racks.

Ken

I have the Krauser 'cast aluminium?' racks, which are bulletproof. I also recently bought the same rack but made out of some kind of plastic. It will be interesting to see how they hold up, if I ever need to use them.
The old (and best looking ) Krauser bags are also just about bulletproof. I once weighed a pannier before leaving on a tour....... 18 kilograms.