The drill is screaming!
I added an extra water bottle cage hole to the underside of the down tube on an Opera Canova—Opera being a sub-brand of Pinarello that existed in the past.
The customer wanted to run dual water bottles during summer,
but didn't want to use a saddle bag.
The bottle cage is an Elite Custom Race. It has a round hole next to an oblong slot for some minor position adjustment,
but this frame had so many constraints that it didn't help much.
↑I mounted a tool can here. You might think it could go a bit lower, but
when the chain is
on the inner chainring (as in the image above),
when it's on the outer chainring,
and during the shift from inner to outer—these three scenarios have no issues—
but at this moment during the shift from outer to inner
the clearance between the chain and bottle shrinks drastically,
so you need to position it where there's no interference.
The Custom Race has an open design on the bottom sides of the cage, which worked in our favor,
but depending on the cage design, the cage itself could interfere with the chain
even without a bottle or tool can inside it.
There's a trick of angling the hole slightly to the left to avoid contact with the left crank,
but this frame has its own proprietary hanger-mounted lower cable routing
descended from the original Dogma—a magnesium frame design
(though the shape differs from the original Dogma's)
The position of the outer cable stop at the top also matters, but
the shift cables running along the underside of the down tube are so close together
that the positioning with the bottle cage was incredibly tight.
Depending on the cage, we found that some can't be mounted at all.
Strictly speaking, the rear derailleur-side (right side) cable runs lower,
but even that small difference was tight.
Also, the Elite tool can I showed in an earlier image is too long
and interferes with the front wheel, so
we had to go with a shorter tool can.
If there were other favorable conditions—like a gravel-specific single-speed crank setup,
or if the frame size were one size larger with a longer front center—
the mounting position could change.
As for cages themselves, for example Elite's Ciussi would
interfere with shift cables, and
Elite's Cannibal XC actually interferes with the cage itself during inner chainring shifts.
You could use spacers to float the cage off the frame,
which would eliminate shift cable interference with pretty much any cage,
but those few millimeters of clearance get eaten up by the front wheel tolerance.
To begin with, compared to steel frames and such,
this frame's down tube diameter alone is equivalent to substantial spacer buildup.
The customer's crankset has 50×34T gearing,
but if they ever upgrade to a larger outer chainring in the future,
adjustment (fine-tuning with the actual parts) will definitely be necessary.
So honestly, I don't really want to do this kind of work,
but when I asked the customer "how did you know our shop could handle this kind of job?"
they said they found out from this blog.
Which means I probably shouldn't be posting about it here.
I added an extra water bottle cage hole to the underside of the down tube on an Opera Canova—Opera being a sub-brand of Pinarello that existed in the past.
The customer wanted to run dual water bottles during summer,
but didn't want to use a saddle bag.
The bottle cage is an Elite Custom Race. It has a round hole next to an oblong slot for some minor position adjustment,
but this frame had so many constraints that it didn't help much.
↑I mounted a tool can here. You might think it could go a bit lower, but
when the chain is
on the inner chainring (as in the image above),
when it's on the outer chainring,
and during the shift from inner to outer—these three scenarios have no issues—
but at this moment during the shift from outer to inner
the clearance between the chain and bottle shrinks drastically,
so you need to position it where there's no interference.
The Custom Race has an open design on the bottom sides of the cage, which worked in our favor,
but depending on the cage design, the cage itself could interfere with the chain
even without a bottle or tool can inside it.
There's a trick of angling the hole slightly to the left to avoid contact with the left crank,
but this frame has its own proprietary hanger-mounted lower cable routing
descended from the original Dogma—a magnesium frame design
(though the shape differs from the original Dogma's)
The position of the outer cable stop at the top also matters, but
the shift cables running along the underside of the down tube are so close together
that the positioning with the bottle cage was incredibly tight.
Depending on the cage, we found that some can't be mounted at all.
Strictly speaking, the rear derailleur-side (right side) cable runs lower,
but even that small difference was tight.
Also, the Elite tool can I showed in an earlier image is too long
and interferes with the front wheel, so
we had to go with a shorter tool can.
If there were other favorable conditions—like a gravel-specific single-speed crank setup,
or if the frame size were one size larger with a longer front center—
the mounting position could change.
As for cages themselves, for example Elite's Ciussi would
interfere with shift cables, and
Elite's Cannibal XC actually interferes with the cage itself during inner chainring shifts.
You could use spacers to float the cage off the frame,
which would eliminate shift cable interference with pretty much any cage,
but those few millimeters of clearance get eaten up by the front wheel tolerance.
To begin with, compared to steel frames and such,
this frame's down tube diameter alone is equivalent to substantial spacer buildup.
The customer's crankset has 50×34T gearing,
but if they ever upgrade to a larger outer chainring in the future,
adjustment (fine-tuning with the actual parts) will definitely be necessary.
So honestly, I don't really want to do this kind of work,
but when I asked the customer "how did you know our shop could handle this kind of job?"
they said they found out from this blog.
Which means I probably shouldn't be posting about it here.