Hi All!
Salsa did revise their original Anything cages after a some breakage at the welds. The revised model looked very similar and was also made of aluminum rod. It is still in production.
They have recently introduced the Anything HD cage, made of reinforced thermoplastic. I am intrigued by it and may make the jump if I can determine whether the spacing of the three bolt holes will allow me to fit bottles to my Nomad in the same configuration as my present setup. Salsa take care to explain the three holes on the present setup can be used with two bosses, either as bottom two or upper two, but three provide maximum stability. Caveat ahead!: Care must be used to loop the webbing straps around the frame tube as well as thread it through the cage and item being carried. This is critical to the success of the design. It is also a reason why I am exploring my options further. I would like to avoid sawing the straps through accumulated alkali grit and scratching my paint.
More about the Salsa Anything HD here:
http://salsacycles.com/components/category/accessories/anything_cage_hdhttp://salsacycles.com/culture/introducing_the_anything_cage_hdhttp://salsacycles.com/culture/product_process_the_anything_cage_hdI currently use three Blackburn B-52 "Bomber" bottle cages. They have been flawless in use, but have one drawback: They are optimized for one particular bottle size and shape of 1.5l bottle. Bottled water used to come in pretty uniform containers, but now (at least here in the US), bottles have a wide variety of shaped for product differentiation on store shelves. This has me looking at alternatives to the Blackburn going forward.
I used Monkii cages on AndyBG's Raven Tour last summer. He has had great success with them and likes them very much. Me? Notsomuch. I had nearly constant problems with them. I found when it was wet, the bottle did not stay attached to the cage because there was so little friction between the plastic tray/velcro and a wet PET bottle. This meant when it was rainy, it was impossible for me to remove the bottle with the cage still attached as intended. Because of this, replacing the bottle was a fiddly process and the bottle was not held securely because the velcro could not be done up tightly enough. Worse, the cage stopper (bedstop) that supports the bottle's bottom proved too flimsy under the weight of a full bottle on rough roads and allowed the bottle to slide downward onto the frame or hang into space. This happened with 1.5l PET bottles Andy supplied and ones I replaced along the way and also with much smaller bottles (0.5l and 1l). In the photos below taken in Belgium, you can see the bottom bottle still secured by velcro but slipped down past its bedstop. The bottle on the seat tube has also sunk past its bedstop to rest on the downtube, and the downtube mounted bottle has come to rest against the one on the seat tube.
Based on my 4+ months' continuous touring experience with the Monkii Cage, I think I would instead choose the Gorilla Cage from the same company -- at least for large bottles on rough roads and in the wet. In fact, it is on my short list of cages to try if I abandon the Blackburn, and seems to have addressed all the problems I experienced with full bottles in the Monkii Cage on Belgian cobbles and the sometimes very rough roads of Eastern Europe. It includes every suggestion I had for it; I've yet to try the new design but hope to soon.
Just a note from my past experiments: If a bottle cage's two or three mounting points aren't exactly where they need to be, it is easy to make an intermediate "mounting shoe" from steel or aluminum strip stock to offset the cage just enough to clear a frame tube or neighboring bottle. I will probably do this myself if I change from the Blackburns, which have many mounting holes to choose from.
A final note: Zéfal make a "Magnum" water bottle of conventional diameter, but tall enough for a 1l capacity. I have had very good luck using two of these in conventional (nylon, CatEye) cages attached to my steerer. If one already has conventional cages and just want a bit more capacity, the 1l Magnums are quite a boost over the usual ~0.5l and ~0.75l bottles. They can leak if the lids are not screwed very tightly, but the trick there is to hold the top and the very bottom and twist in opposite directions. The lid can't be secured adequately if the bottle is held in the middle.
All the best,
Dan. (...who seems to have water, water everywhere on his bikes -- and often needs it all)
