Rick Paulos wrote:
>
> Someone was asking why handlebar mount waterbottle cages went out of style.
>
> Well I put a TA on my wifes late 70s black & gold AD Ventnoir for a week
> long tour in '98. No cage braze-ons on the frame and we didn't want to
> bugger up the perfect paint job. The bottles kept jumping out of the
> cage! Any bumps were magnified and the stem acted like a spring to make it
> worse. Strings, bread bag ties and rubber bands were added to try to keep
> the bottle in. Also, the cage wants to keep rotating downwards under the
> weight of a full bottle.
Rick, this has been covered in the past, but the short answer is that handlebar cages were used successfully for 50+ years in racing and if you look at old photos of racers you'll notice the the cages were angled forward about 45° so that the upward force of a bump would not force the bottle out of the cage. Also the weight of a full bottle would not rotate the cage from its 45° angle.
Chuck Schmidt South Pasadena, Southern California
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