Looking to save weight and get rid of that ugly water bottle cage? Check out Fabric’s cageless water bottle. I saw this for the first time at Sea Otter last week, and my mind was pretty much blown. I’ll let the photos do most of the explaining.
The clips on the bottle are actually really tight–you need to use a good amount of force to get the bottle on and off the mounts. This is a good thing, particularly for mountain biking since you don’t want your bottle bouncing out on the trail. The bottles themselves are fairly low capacity (600ml), but it sounds as if other shapes and sizes are in the works.
The bottles come with two sets of mounts so you can outfit two of your bikes. The bottles were available at Sea Otter for purchase for about $15, and the Fabric website has the MSRP listed at 9.99 GBP (a little over $14).
1 Comments
May 5, 2016
The verdict after 6months of hard use: 1-Star (out of 5). Fabric's bottle system simply isn't up to offroad use. I had high hopes that this would be a clean, simple solution to shorter rides where I didn't want to wear a Camelback. Here is why Fabric fails: 1) these bottles fall off. They simply launch off my 5" trailbike on moderately rocky XC trails. You can't always predict when, but they do, almost every ride. I've been "fortunate" enough to find the bottle again so I have enough water to finish my ride, but you simply can't rely on this system to keep water on your bike when you need it most. 2) The nozzle: the nozzle has a wide mouth & large silicon diaphragm like the Camelbak bottles, this means the bottle picks up as much dust & mud as you can find with your front wheel. The diaphragm also "puckers" meaning it opens up like a flower, allowing grit to accumulate *inside* the bottle. Fabric needs to make a traditional push-pull nozzle w/ a center plug like the specialized widemouth if they want to sell these to dirt riders. 3) Force of insertion/removal combined w/ short bottle & non-adjustable studs. This bottle cleared the shock on my SC 5010, but sits so low on the XL frame I have to slam my dropper post just to reach it. When I do, it requires so much force to yank it off, that it's almost impossible to drink while holding a line on narrow singletrack, & putting it back on is even worse since you have to take your eyes off the trail for several seconds to locate the studs & ram it back on. Simply put, you have to stop the bike to drink from this thing unless you're on a smooth, mellow jeep road.