Yesterday upon cleaning my bike I noticed both bottle cages behind the saddle were broken. They are the plastic Specialized rib cages - only bottle cage that has worked for me so far in terms of not launching any bottles.
Are the carbon cages stronger and worth the expense? They’re basically 3x the cost of the plastic cages. I really want to stick with the rib cage, no interest in X-Lab gorilla etc (tried it, no luck) because functionally, the rib cage has been excellent.
stick with plastic. Anything that breaks the plastic ones will most likely break the carbon cages as well. This way it is cheaper in the long run…
How were they broken? If they were broken at the point of connection you could be over tightening the bolts. My buddy broke multiple cages by overtightening then road jarring finishing the job and cracking the cage. It doesn’t take much to keep them on your bike.
Not near the bolts, in both cases it’s just one of the ‘ribs’ that makes up the cage itself. Seems broken just from use. Using the Specialized bottles.
Specialized use a pretty cheap carbon fiber for bottle cages, so they are not particularly strong. If I only wanted durability, I’d stick with the plastic ones.
The carbon ones are a bit lighter, look nice, and have the prestige of being an expensive carbon cage I guess.
Having said that, I spent almost a hundred dollars recently on two Arundle carbon cages for my road bike and they seem pretty durable.
That’s interesting. I have only used carbon cages and have had no issues with breaking personally. I can’t recommend carbon on the rib cage though as I use Xlabs. I would try the plastic one again since it is 3x less. If it happens again, onward and upward price and material wise to the carbon ones since you seem to like the rib cage so much.