Small frame woes!

I’ve been looking at ways in which I can help improve my fluid intake on the bike.  I only have short legs so commensurate with that I have a rather compact frame.  Whenever I ride distances over 100 miles I always mount my Revelate tangle frame bag which leaves room for not much more than a small bidon, which is what I’ve been making do with for a while now.  Its not holding me back but it will do in certain situations.  The benefit of carrying a single bidon of course is less weight, but on the flip side I have to stop frequently to top up which then affects my overall elapsed time on long rides.  I can get away with carrying one in the UK as your never too far from a top up.  When your taking on more remote areas then you need to be able to carry more.  So I’ve made a start overcoming this problem and thought I’d tell you about it.

Current setup

So this is how my bike currently looks with the frame bag attached.  A standard bottle cage fitted to the regular bosses on the down tube, the space is simply to tight and compact for anything larger.  I’ve managed with it like this for a while now but its always been a little awkward especially putting the bottle back in the cage.  I’m not that keen on taking my eye off the road when replacing it.

Not much room in the triangle using the standard cage bosses.

New setup

To fit a large bidon in the triangle I needed to seat it nearer the bottom apex of the down and seat tubes.  Initially I mounted a Di2 battery mount adaptor to the frame bosses which worked somewhat but still didn’t give me enough of a drop to reasonably mount a large bidon.  I searched the web high and low but couldn’t find anything that was going to give me what I was looking for.  The only option was to find somebody to make it for me.

Whilst at the local bike shop I stumbled across a local chap who happened to be an engineer, after a chat I managed to persuade him to make me a bespoke adapter in return for a little cash.  So I drew up a template and low and behold a week later I had an adaptor made of aluminium with prepared holes to mount on the regular bosses and holes for a bidon cage.  All it needed was a lick of paint and it was ready for mounting using the standard bolts.  I decided a new bottle cage was needed and so ordered a Bontrager sideswipe race lite bottle cage.  Before mounting I painted the new adaptor with black gloss metal paint so it matched in with the cage.  Just to give the adaptor some flex when using the bottle I mounted beneath it two small pieces of black plastic tubing leaving the lower end free from the down tube to give the flex.

Hey presto, one large bottle mounted, looking good and all appears to be working a treat.

Adaptor painted and mounted along with the new bottle cage.  I think it looks pretty neat!

The end result.

Second bottle?

The question now is what do I do about a second bidon?  I’ve been researching some of the aero bar options used in time trials.  I’ve seen one or two that could work but I’d like to see them in the flesh before I purchase.  So the plan is to make a little time to check some out.  I do like the idea though of one up front with its aero advantages and ease of accessibility.  In the mean time one large bidon is good for winter, I know I can pretty much get through 100miles non stop on that.

I’ll let you know what I go for in due course.

So short and sweet, ride safe folks!

Paul