Zip-Tie water bottle cage mounts

The bikes are pretty well sorted for the up coming tour of Iceland and the Camino De Santiago in Spain, save for places to keep our water.   

My initial inkling was to just keep bottles in the frame-bags and have a camel back set up with the MSR dromedary, but then I look to this guy for some inspiration in ingenuity. 

  Fork legs on a bike make a great spot for mounting additional supplies, when you run out of room elsewhere on a bike and helps to better to distribute weight; especially when you have a tendency to over pack. 

Many rigid bikes for snow, gravel, dirt, or touring are now coming equipped with fork brazons for front racks, water bottles, the aluminum Salsa's Everything Cage, or the new stainless steel Manything Cage from King Cage. 

Having broken two aluminum Everything Cages, over the past two winters,  I would highly recommend avoiding the Salsa product and putting your money into the stronger, lighter, and hand-made Manything Cage from Andrews.  

Great for large amounts of water, sleeping essentials, 

or beer. 

   Wanting to keep things light, and not needing large volume carrying capacity, standard sized water bottle cages will suffice for my purposes.  Upon inspection of my various cages at hand, the plastic  Velocity Bottle Trap looks perfect for a light-weight DIY fork mount.

The backside of the Bottle Trap is slightly concave perfectly suited for strapping snugly to a rounded fork leg, but the design of the Bottle Trap is to "hug" the water bottle from all sides effectively limiting options to  lace any straps or zip ties through the cage,  due to the close tolerance necessary to hold a water bottle in place. 

Fortunately there is a recessed area for the typical mounting hardware allowing an area for a zip ties to pass without interfering with the functional design of the Bottle Trap, but you have to drill the holes first.

Best to begin by Dremeling small holes,  which can then be elongated to accommodate the width of a  wide strong zip tie.

Took a total of 5 minutes to drill-out 4 cages. 

Weighing the options:

Specialized aluminum cage with bolts: 50 grams even.

King Cage Titanium with bolts: 34 grams

Velocity Bottle Trap with zip ties and pieces of a rubber tube: 44 grams.

(just the Trap weighs in at 32g, only 4 grams more than the King Ti Cage at 28 g)

A bargain at $7 vs $60 for the King

Testing durability of the plastic

Good product.  Passed the stomp test.
Now I know it won't break if a Viking kicks me as I ride by.

Now to mount it:

Wrap a length of old tube around the fork leg to prevent slippage.

Thread two zip ties through the holes, and secure the cage to the fork leg, wrapping the ties around the length of old tube.  

(this was just a mock up for placement, much stronger zip-ties should be used for actual riding)

voila 

Also important that your bottle cages match the color of your cable housing!

This color coordination is guaranteed to improve your riding skills and balance.

The Meca of Fat-Biking

Stopped by my LBS this evening to pick up a few miscellaneous parts for my Travelers-Check build.
The pit in my stomach after paying far too much for cones and bearings to rebuild some old Shimano hubs was quickly abated at the sight of a shiny Ti fat-bike rolling through the door.

The pilot of this lust-worthy machine is Troy, who had recently arrived from sunny Australia on a fat-bike pilgrimage to the frozen white north.  Troy came to Alaska to give his new Muru  frame a full shake down and hone his own winter fat-biking skills at the 5 day ITI "Training Camp", learning the requisite skills to survive on a multi-day winter bike-packing excursion.  

This Bike was a beauty. The titanium frame from Muru Cycles was barely visible under a full kit from Revelate Designs, and had a top shelf build: Hope hubs, DuskerDu 120 tpi tires, XO drive train, Surly MWOD cranks.   The frame-set had super-clean welds and I was told it had ben made in China along side other notable titanium bike manufacturers. 

First of its kind, adventure ready titanium fork with six brazons to accommodate the Salsa 'everything cage': 

170mm symmetrical rear with ample clearance for bigger tires...  

It was refreshing to stand around and geek out on a bike like a bunch of kids; just getting excited about how FUN it is to ride a bike in the snow!  A stark contrast to this week's resurgence in all the Lance Armstrong hoopla.  Also great to see the developing ingenuity in the fat-bike niche and the growing world community of fat-bikers.  Hearing Troy's tales of urban adventures in biking around Anchorage since his arrival, gave some some perspective to the logistical intensity of winter-biking that has become part of daily routine.   I wish Troy all the best on his Alaskan adventure!