Mods to 2013 Golite Jam 50L

It's hard to tell for sure from the pics, but it appears the corrugations on that framesheet and oriented horizontally. In my experience with coroplast frame sheets over the years (I've made 5 or 6 bags utilizing them) it's best to orient the corrugations vertically. They are much stiffer in this direction. This is due to the fact that with use, the material can become creased along the corrugations, and the stiffness will suffer greatly. Orienting the corrugations up and down, uses the stiff properties of the material much more effectively.

Just a heads up, hope this helps!

P.s. I'm located in Portland, too and TAP plastics rocks! Love that place.

For lighter pack weights I believe it is less important to get a rigid frame and more important to get a rigid pack meaning the pack should be filled and become a unibody. If you look at the picture you have serious sagging because you pack isn't filled. I suspect you have gear in stuff sack vs letting it fill out the voids. I have been able to easily carry 25 pounds in my completely frameless pack my consolidating the volume into a single mass. The only frame is a short neoair xlite folded against the back. It is acting more as a cushion than as a frame. Pack packing technique is probably the single biggest factor in making a frameless pack comfortable.

Hey Malto:
As i mention in the text of the post, the pack is just fine with me at the suggested weights. My quilt is in there with no stuff sack. I don't use stuff sacks to pack all my stuff in, just a 45L pack liner, and as you said, let things fill up the nooks and crannies.

The pack is full of random cans and bottles of water for weight, so a little lumpy and not a good distribution of weight, honestly. Half my gear is packed away in boxes (in the process of moving) so had to shove in whatever I could find for weight. Not the best analog, for sure, but gives me an idea of how it'll feel.

This project was more just for fun and to see what I can do to help it carry >25 lbs, again, just to see, not out of necessity.

I just finished making a framesheet using foamed PVC (again, for fun). I loaded the pack with 35# of stuff and it is surprisingly comfortable. New post has the details.

Made some more modifications this week. Pack is stuffed with pillows, so it's bent a little funny.

Hi Andy, can you explain some of the newest mods, what exactly they are for, etc? I'm assuming the dyneema line is to hold things on the side or for extra structure, but i don't really know.

Yeah, sorry bout the confusing post. I updated using my phone and lost the original post (all it showed was some cordage I added to inside the bag to hold some CCF and some pics using extra ccf/poster board as additional frame/support)

The new stuff I did is what you now see in the new post.

I turned the top of the bag from a drawstring closure to a roll top closure that buckles onto each side with Lineloc buckles. I also removed the original compression straps (leaving enough strap to sew on Linelocs and grommets for the GloWire) and replaced it with Linelocs and cord for reducing volume of the pack.

I also kept the original top buckle but cut off the strap and added shock cord to it so that I can lash stuff on to the top of my bag (like a jacket or thin ccf pad) if I need to.

I like the roll top better, as I find it'll probably be more weather proof (I had a small puddle form at the top with the original closure method+over the top compression strap and some water leaked in. Not that big a deal since everything inside was in a liner). Plus I think it looks nicer. I still need to add a drainage hole in bottom of the main pack body as I had a pool of water there when I was hiking 5+ hours in steady moderate/heavy rain.

Ok, thank you for the explanations. For what you wanted to achieve, i would say pretty nice work.

Re: the drainage hole, have you experimented with using ponchos at all?