Wolf Tooth B-RAD Pump Bag

The Wolf Tooth B-RAD Pump Bag is a handy size, carrying more than enough to keep stuff out of your pockets, and the fact that you can either strap or bolt it to your bike adds versatility.

The Pump Bag is part of Wolf Tooth's B-RAD storage and hardware system, a collection of straps, bags and metal fixings designed to be used together for carrying all your tools, spares and knick knacks on your bike.

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The Pump Bag is long, thin and not very deep, a size and shape that has both its positives and negatives. Its elongated and slim profile means it's unobtrusive and hides well in the shadow of a bicycle tube – less likely to be knocked or brushed with a knee if you mount it on the top-tube and easily forgettable under a down tube. But the slender rectangular shape also means you have to be particular and careful with your packing; you can't just stuff stuff in there and do the zip up.

The clue in the Pump Bag name is that at about 12in long it's the perfect size for hiding a mini-pump in, and with a roomy-for-this-sort-of-bag 1.9-litre capacity, it's possible to squeeze in a tube or two (subject to size) and some tools as well alongside that. Or you could wodge a featherweight jacket in. And snacks, definitely snacks. Depending on the shape of what you want to squeeze in, a bit of kit Tetris is required, but it does pay to fill it right up as a partially packed Pump Bag will tend to rattle annoyingly.

The Pump Bag comes with mounting options, in that it can be strapped to your bike, bolted to any spare bottle bosses, or attached to a Wolf Tooth B-RAD Mounting Base as part of its modular storage system.

The strap option is the quickest and most adaptable way of attaching it to your bike. There are a pair of loops at each end of the spine of the bag, through which you thread the two wide silicone-backed Velcro straps, to attach the bag around a bike tube. There is also a full length and sectioned webbing strap that runs along the side of the bag which you can loop these straps through; this option orientates the zip to the side of the bike so is the better choice for top-tube mounting and access.

The silicone backing of the straps both adds grip and protects your paint job, although you'll want to put something over the metal grommets that are spaced along the spine.

The straps hold the bag to your frame securely, with no sway or wobble. Putting it on a tube whose orientation is more vertical than horizontal requires an amount of pulling tight on the straps as it will want to shuffle down, especially if you've packed it with heavier things and/or are riding over bumpier ground.

The spine of the bag is reinforced with a stiff insert which keeps the bag's shape, and there are four grommet holes in there that handily coincide with frame bosses on your bike or the Wolf Tooth B-Rad Mounting Base.

Fitting the Pump Bag to a bike's bosses with the supplied T25 Torx head bolts can be a little fiddly, but a large internal flap Velcros over the top of the grommets and bolts to protect the bag's contents from rubbing and help prevent damp ingress. Once tightened on, the Pump Bag is there to stay, and that's probably a good thing as it's not something you'd want to remove frequently or swap to another bike once it's bolted on.

Depending on where your bike has bottle bosses, the Pump Bag could be mounted on the down tube, seat tube, top tube, on the fork if you're a bikepackering type, or under the down tube by the bottom bracket; its long and thin shape means it will fit in all of these places with little interference.

If you do mount it under the down tube, be aware that it will get covered in any wet and mud you splash through, which will make access to the contents a bit of a gikky concern. Thankfully, the bag is made from PVC-backed ripstop nylon so will defiantly shrug off damp and grit ingress, although the YKK zip is only water resistant.

If you can only mount the Pump Bag with the end pair of its mounting holes, whether that's to bottle bosses or a B-RAD base, the other end will want to flex and rattle against the frame, so using the spare Velcro strap to hold it tight against the frame works wonders.

There's any number of on bike storage solutions to choose from these days that can strap and bolt to tubes and bars and saddles and seatposts, so it's tricky to stand out, but the B-RAD Pump Bag is a nice little thing. Its slender shape keeps it relatively innocuous on the bike, if that sort of thing matters to you, and it will certainly relieve your pockets of storage duties.

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In size and shape it's similar to the Apidura Racing Long Top Tube Pack but the Wolf Tooth is less feature heavy and isn't constrained to being attached to the top tube. The Apidura is also more expensive at £72.

If you wanted to carry a lot more stuff then the bigger and more bikepackery Wildcat Ocelot might be more your bag – but it'll cost you £105.

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The Evoc Multi Frame Pack is another option, with a certain level of strap adaptability to fit a variety of frame positions; it's a similar price (£40) but half the capacity.

Conclusion

Bigger than most seat packs yet smaller than a frame bag, the Pump Bag will fit most of what you might need for a good day out, but squeezing all your on-bike kit and kaboodle requirements into it can be a bit of a jigsaw challenge, and it does help to make sure it's tightly packed so your stuff doesn't rattle about. But the option of having the bag strapped or bolted on the bike, or attached via the separate B-RAD base, means the Pump Bag should fit to any bike, no matter what weird and wonderful tube configurations, shapes and bends it might have.

Verdict

Handy, unobtrusive storage for a pump and other bits, with the option to strap or bolt it on making it both adaptable and secure