Welcome to the first installment of Wish List, where Radavist contributors share their dreams of things that don’t exist, but maybe should. Some will be slightly niche but perfectly reasonable ideas that have every right to exist. Others will be impractical, expensive, and/or dangerous fantasies that probably should remain fantasies. Travis dives in first with a list that spans this spectrum quite nicely.
Bottle Uncage
Bike manufacturers often drill their cage mounts dead-center the downtube, leaving the bottle looking like a double-parked Honda Fit. I’d much rather the bottle be tucked down near the seat-tube-mounted bottle. It leaves more room for a frame bag, and simply looks better. Thankfully, there are solutions like the Wolf Tooth B-Rad, which can move your bottle cage just about anywhere you want. Problem is, the B-Rad also bumps it away from the frame about seven millimeters. On full-suspension bikes, that can be enough to run up against a shock or a link. But it can also be an issue on hardtails, even ones with roomy front-triangles. I had to use a B-Rad on my XL Otso Fenrir to fit a large bottle under my half-frame bag. And because of that 7 mm-thick B-Rad assembly, it’s still a tight fit against the seat-tube bottle on one end and the bottom of the bag on the other. But it wouldn’t be if someone took my idea.
The idea is a bottle cage with a wider range of position options. Or rather, two bottle cages. One with the mounting plate extended a few centimeters above-center, and another extended a few centimeters below-center. It wouldn’t need to be much, so I doubt there’d be stability issues. It would just have to offer a lot of freedom for fine-tuning the position, so it should feature a flexible bolt pattern like the Wolf Tooth Morse Cage. And since Wolf Tooth is already in the business of teleporting your bottle mounts, I think they’d be the perfect brand to make this a reality.
Shock Top
Telescoping suspension seatposts aren’t great. They help a little, but there’s a fundamental flaw: seat tubes are angled down and forward, but the inertia of your body weight is directed down and rearward relative to the rest of the bike. That’s why linkage suspension posts from Cane Creek and Redshift are such Cadillacs. They move in a more natural direction, and are subject to much less friction. But if you want suspension and a dropper post, you’re limited to something like the PNW Coast dropper. And it’s not bad, but it’s no Cadillac. And it stops at 120 mm of travel. So, I’ve got a better idea.
As Fair Bicycle has proven with the Drop Best, and Aenomaly with the Switchgrade, aftermarket saddle clamps are possible. So, what if you just plopped a parallelogram-style suspension setup right on top of a dropper? Best of both worlds. And you don’t even have to get rid of your dropper! I mean, it does add a significant amount of stack height, so it may be just for the very tall or those with very low standovers And I have no idea if it’d be a problem to cantilever that much weight up and behind the original clamping area. But that’s for Cane Creek to figure out.
Departure Gate
There’s something about tailgate pads that looks so clumsy. They just seem like the kind of thing you’re supposed to take off and stow when you’re done using them, like a windshield sun visor or a set of snow chains. Especially now that modern pickup trucks have the elegance (and price tags) of modern luxury cars, I think it’s time for the tailgate pad to catch up.
An integrated pad would do a lot of things. For one, it would look better. There would be no visible straps holding it on. It’d look like a magic trick. And It wouldn’t shimmy its way off-center over time, or clock its way around the tailgate so that the cradles and straps aren’t where they’re supposed to be. It’d be flush, taught, and clean. It’d also be extremely expensive. There are a lot of different trucks out there, and not every brand is gonna make a bike-specific tailgate for every model. So, this may be a custom service like aftermarket bumpers or integrated pop-tent roofs. I could even see a brand like Go Fast Campers taking it on. The pad itself would still be replaceable, but would unbolt instead of unstrap. It’d probably cost more than the Blue Book value of my 2006 Tacoma, but so do half my bikes, so I’d consider it.
The Right Tool
I’m kinda picky about my multi-tools. Even my favorite ones need to be supplemented with one or two other tools in my every-ride-carry kit. And that’s because the tool makers don’t know you. They don’t know what bike you ride. They don’t know if your derailleur limit screws are 2.5mm Allen, not #2 Phillips. Hell, they don’t know if your derailleur even has limit screws. And so few bike tools include a knife. The Topeak Tubi Tool does, which is great, but it’s also got a clumsy tire-plug storage compartment, which is not great.
That’s why I’ve always wanted to make my dream multi-tool. Like, I’d love to have one with not just one Dynaplug insertion tool, but two of them. One of the thick ones and one of the thin ones. Nobody’s going to offer that off-the-shelf. So, I picture an a-la-carte tool-purchasing process, where you pick exactly which bits you want in your multi tool, and a program automatically optimizes the layout to prevent overlap and minimize wasted space. There’d have to be some limitation because, for example, a chain tool has a unique shape that may only work next to certain bits. But I’m sure it could be done. And since this service is already going to come at a premium, I’d throw in some other choices. Like maybe multiple lengths or optional titanium hardware. This has Lezyne or Crankbrothers written all over it, but I kinda think it’d be a great idea for Topeak. It wouldn’t be any weirder than the Alien S Tool.
