Thursday, May 18, 2017

Success in Part, then Nearly Epic Disaster

The front triangle changes are working well.  The bottles are secure and drawing from the down tube cage is notably easier now.  Holstering the bottle is not quite as quick, but I'm sure that will resolve itself with another ride or two.

The behind the seat bottle cage was a near disaster.  Today was the first time I've ridden with a filled bottle in place.  It was a good idea to keep it small with a 550ml or so bottle.  I checked things a few times during the ride and it seemed fine, maybe a bit flexy, but not loose.

But close to my turn around point, I checked and uh oh, the whole thing is flopping around.  I pulled over to look at what's going on and saw that one of the two bolts clamping it to the seat rails was gone.  The remaining one was literally hanging by a thread--I turned it a little and the assembly came apart, leaving the threaded steel plate on the saddle rails while I held the bottle, cage and mount in my hand.  If it had fallen while moving, the cage, etc. could easily have jammed in my rear wheel.

Looks like I needed to use thread locker to keep this thing together.  If I decide to reuse it, I'll likely go with locking nuts on the other side of the plate rather than relying on the minimal threading available in that thin plate.  I'm more likely to add a third bottle cage to the front side of the down tube, if there is room.  I might use something like the SKS Anywhere bottle mount.

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