Finally, the Lonestar was well put together. After 3000 miles of pretty hard riding, plus, unpacking and packing every day with loads that stretched the seams, this bag still looks the same as the day we got it (besides a little dirt).

Frankly, we could only find two things wrong with this luggage. The first is that the way the raincover is designed you can only pull it about 2/3's of the way down on the bag because the mounting system gets in the way. This leaves the bottom 1/3 of your bag exposed to the elements.

I initially thought this was going to be a pretty big problem. After two days of riding in the rain, the bottom of the bag was noticeably wet, in fact dripping wet. But, luckily all of the stuff inside was dry. Rain: 0pts, T-Bag Construction: 1pt.

UPDATE: You actually can get the raincover over the whole bag, it just takes a lot of pulling and muscle to get it there. So, it works as designed, its just very difficult to get on.

Nonetheless, an easy fix for this would be for T-bags to make the raincover larger so that it fit over the bag and the backrest. This is the main reason we didn't give this bag five out of five stars.

The second thing that we found was that when you pack the main compartment with stuff, the bag bulges and renders the organizing compartment almost useless. A quick fix would be some additional stiffeners behind the organizing pocket. This would help reduce the bulge on the front of a tightly packed bag, and allow you to still use the organizing pocket.

Overall, this is a great bag for the money. How did we do against our list of things we wanted? Well, let's see:

1. Was straight forward to use with lots of features (rain proof was a must) - YES.
2. Had enough space for my wife AND my gear on tours - MORE THAN ENOUGH.
3. Didn't fall apart after a 4000 mile trip - WE'RE STILL USING IT.
4. Had good looks - ABSOLUTELY. This bag looked the same whether empty or fully packed.

This bag has seen many more miles since this initial test and I'm happy to say it's still as good as new. If you're looking for the ultimate in quality, value, long-term utility, and storage for your next long distance journey, make sure the T-Bag Universal Lonestar bag is at the top of your list.

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