Originally Posted by
Rick_D
I hear ya. Have a Blackburn stainless, must be 25 YO, and it's flawless. My old aluminum cages are all worn and bent into weird shapes--it's the Clark Kent of cages.
My Kings go back top about 2000. Every cage I've bought since then. 2 per bike and the fleet has grown. I still have 2 TAs going. The cage that King and many others copied (but made better) because they worked so well. Yes, welds eventually broke and the earlier ones shed the plastic before that happened but they were the easy stuff and didn't shed bottles. The story I heard several times was that TA kept making them years after they disappeared over here because the lessor known pro riders insisted they keep making them. (The no-name riders who do their hard work first half of the race, then have to drag themselves along the rest of the course and over the mountains to finish inside the time limit and start again tomorrow. Their team car is far up the road. If they lose a bottle on the rough descent, dehydration might lead to sickness, dropping out and perhaps not a contract next year. Lugging a couple extra ounces up that mountain with the peloton far up the road? Who cares.)