The drill whines to life!
A customer asked me to add a bottle cage mounting hole on the back of the down tube.
For gravel riding and such, he wants to use the two bottle cages in the front triangle for drinks,
and he wants to mount a tool canister on the underside of the down tube instead.
Since the height changes quite a bit depending on where the holes on the bottle cage are positioned,
I decided to determine the hole location by test-fitting the actual parts first.
↑The red mark drawn on the blue masking tape stuck on the side of the down tube shows the upper bottle cage hole.
If I position the bottle cage lower, it risks interfering with the chainring,
and if I position it higher, the bottle or tool canister gets too close to the front wheel.
This time I went quite low.
Or rather, it's practically the lowest position where the King cage I brought could actually be mounted.
I have a super-hard carbide drill in a very fine size,
so I used that to drill the pilot hole.
The image shows the state before that step though.
This carbide drill is hard enough to drill straight through steel bolts pretty effortlessly,
and the last time I used it was when I made the S☆B wagon wagon (→here).
I enlarged the pilot hole to the size needed for the rivet nuts.
I crimped in the rivet nuts.
The holes might look like they're not parallel to each other,
but actually they are.
I mounted the bottle cage.
It's a King titanium cage, with the two on the front triangle having a polished finish,
while the one under the down tube has a matte finish, apparently.
At this position, it doesn't interfere with the front derailleur—it's right at the limit.
Depending on the bottle cage shape, there's potential for interference,
so if you're going this low, you definitely need to test-fit first.
The person who came with the customer today rides a custom frame,
and when that frame was ordered, they had a bottle cage boss built in from the start
on the underside of the down tube.
That position is slightly higher, and when you insert a long tool canister it interferes with the front wheel,
but there's a reason for it being set at that slightly higher position.
Based on that experience, they said "Just go as low as possible!"
and that's the red mark at the beginning of this post.
I added a spacer to avoid interference between the cage and the shift cable.
I'd like to use something with a thickness that fits more precisely,
but I didn't have that on hand.
A customer asked me to add a bottle cage mounting hole on the back of the down tube.
For gravel riding and such, he wants to use the two bottle cages in the front triangle for drinks,
and he wants to mount a tool canister on the underside of the down tube instead.
Since the height changes quite a bit depending on where the holes on the bottle cage are positioned,
I decided to determine the hole location by test-fitting the actual parts first.
↑The red mark drawn on the blue masking tape stuck on the side of the down tube shows the upper bottle cage hole.
If I position the bottle cage lower, it risks interfering with the chainring,
and if I position it higher, the bottle or tool canister gets too close to the front wheel.
This time I went quite low.
Or rather, it's practically the lowest position where the King cage I brought could actually be mounted.
I have a super-hard carbide drill in a very fine size,
so I used that to drill the pilot hole.
The image shows the state before that step though.
This carbide drill is hard enough to drill straight through steel bolts pretty effortlessly,
and the last time I used it was when I made the S☆B wagon wagon (→here).
I enlarged the pilot hole to the size needed for the rivet nuts.
I crimped in the rivet nuts.
The holes might look like they're not parallel to each other,
but actually they are.
I mounted the bottle cage.
It's a King titanium cage, with the two on the front triangle having a polished finish,
while the one under the down tube has a matte finish, apparently.
At this position, it doesn't interfere with the front derailleur—it's right at the limit.
Depending on the bottle cage shape, there's potential for interference,
so if you're going this low, you definitely need to test-fit first.
The person who came with the customer today rides a custom frame,
and when that frame was ordered, they had a bottle cage boss built in from the start
on the underside of the down tube.
That position is slightly higher, and when you insert a long tool canister it interferes with the front wheel,
but there's a reason for it being set at that slightly higher position.
Based on that experience, they said "Just go as low as possible!"
and that's the red mark at the beginning of this post.
I added a spacer to avoid interference between the cage and the shift cable.
I'd like to use something with a thickness that fits more precisely,
but I didn't have that on hand.