By blackmountaincycles,
Filed under: Uncategorized
But it was working just fine … until it broke. And why did it break? Did you think it would last forever? And, most important, why do you want to replace it with the same think knowing the first one broke at an inopportune moment?
This review of a carbon water bottle cage sparked a memory of a guy who came by the shop on his ride to buy a replacement bottle cage because his broke mid-ride. The review is really nothing more than a review and not a product test because it represents only one week of use. Come back in one year with how it worked, then that’s something.
So, this guy comes in and asks for a bottle cage to replace his broken carbon fiber cage. I show him the King Cage stainless ($18) and their titanium ($60). He asks if I have carbon cages. “No,” I say. He asks “why?” I tell him “because they break.” Oh yeah. He really wants the King titanium cage because at 29 grams it’s in the weight range of carbon cages and is just rad. But he’s on a ride and only has a certain amount of cash with him so on goes the stainless cage and off he goes.
A few weeks go by and he comes by again. His other carbon cage broke in the exact same spot – small wonder! He says that he now has his credit card with him and can he exchange the stainless cage for a titanium cage (+ the difference) and buy a second ti cage? Of course! Now he has two outstanding, made in the U.S.A. titanium King cages and does not have to think about them breaking on a ride. And they are hand made by a great guy in Durango, CO. Bonus.
Two broken carbon cages. When the best just won’t do.
King Cage ti and stainless cages. When you want the best.
(What’s playing: E.L.O. Telephone Line)
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Capt Mike:
This post (and about twenty beers)gives me the courage to ask the question I didn't ask the other day: Your personal cross bike is steel and alloy everything except the seat post. I always thought that should I ever succumb to the allure of carbon the seat post would be the one part that I would probably leave alloy. It seems like tempting the castral fates to put something that could break into a shard under my castral parts.
I made up the word castral but I think it is a good one. I spend many long mile-hours riding in the outback dreaming up my build for that 62c champagne frame and sometimes, when I am really way out there and no one can see, I dress her in carbon everything and DuraAce weightlessness. Even I myself am lighter, perhaps by halving my castral parts, a factor that may not have been accounted for in the evaluation of a certain TdF Champ. Brass is heavy.
So, Cap: What say you? Crabone on steel? A contradiction or a sublime marriage of the new age and the iron-forged past?
gonna have to say, I wonder about the crabon seatposts myself…I saw 3 broken seatpost in my life, all crabon fibre, all Eastons. All admitedly at 'cross races. So all I have is my eyeballs, and they see things and now I share.
King cages are the best…