torpedo mount??
I'd like to try a bottle mount like the torpedo mount or something similar. However, my aerobars are relatively short, and I need my computer mounted up near the end of the bars where I can see it. I'm still new to power, and I can't be looking to my stem as often as I need to look at the computer. Given that, I'm not sure tha I have room for the mount and bottle far enough back so i'd be able to get the bottle out of the cage. One thought that I had is facing the cage backwards, but not sure if that ruins the aerodynamics.
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There seem to be products coming on the market now for mounting bottles on the aerobars. I just used zip ties and a profile cage. Works great. The torpedo mount is also $45! I believe Profile has one in the $10 range.
As far as your potential fit issues, I would just take a bottle and a cage that you have now and experiment before you make any investments. By the way, I have my computer on the stem. Maybe not ideal and I have thought about moving it forward. Haven't taken the time to play with it.
I've been playing around with an aerobar mount as well. As Matt said, zip ties work pretty well, and are a lot cheaper than the torpedo mount. For a cage, the Trek bat cage works great, and is pretty low cost. I've got my PM mounted on my stem and it's not as convenient as having it mounted further outboard but it works. Another alternative you could consider would be to mount your bottle cage with a stem mounted system. King makes a top cap mount and so does Hed. For the Hed mount, you would need to have a significant amount of spacer room, which I didn't have, so I tried the King mount. Didn't like it, because I would occasionally hit my knee on the cage, but it might work for you. By the time I'm finished, I may be back to my original set up, and might forget about putting my water bottle up front.
Richard
@Dave - There's some discussion in this thread about the aero benefits. I know some fast people use this set up. People like Jordan Rapp. I just started using it in training. Not sure about racing at this point.
www.endurancenation.us/en_forums/showthread.php
1) The aerodrink is an an advantage if you have a round tube there, but most frames are now "aero" themselves, and there is no (or much less if any) advantage to having it there over not having it there any more.
2) There are people who tried and hated the original one which shot the sponge out all the time and sloshed a lot more than the current ones. So, emotionally, they just want something else.
3) There is at least someone out there who claims that the straw is a huge aero problem. (as noted in Matt's thread). If you cut the straw down 4 inches as recommended, it's no longer nearly as convenient to drink from, at least for me. I hate that feeling of "reaching" with my head, and if I have to use my arm to lift the straw, I may as well use a torpedo-mounted bottle instead.
4) If you already have other things (hands, computers, etc) in that neighborhood, the theory goes that the torpedo-mounted bottle is almost entirely in the shadow of that stuff and may even theoretically be better.
I know of little hard data, and you really have to be sure that you drink if you do that...after all, ease of drinking was a major point to the aero drink.
I have experimented with it, using zip ties and a very un-sexy metal cage. My computer fits right in FRONT of the bottle, with the nipple just overhanging its base. This way, I can actually look at that thing without looking too far down. Hands are almost immediately in front of the computer. Using zip ties gives the cage a little flexibility so I don't have to be super-duper precise in putting the bottle back. As long as I'm close, the "give" in the zip ties helps guide it in.
Here are a couple not-so-sexy photos of my setup. You can see the bottle nipple just over the bottom of the Garmin. The bars are the stock ski-bend type from Cervelo where the heels of my hands are also next to the Garmin. The top view shows you how good the visibility of the computer (which is switched off in the photo) is from approximately my head angle, but farther away. The bottle hardly obstructs the computer at all.
William
I go with the -17 stem because when it is mounted to a 73 head tube you get a flat 90 stem and I'm anal about like things like that. As a 6 degree stem and s-bend extentions would have the bottle above my arms, with my setup it hidden between my arms.
As you can see from the side view, the bottom of the bottle on my not-very-sexy rig is 1-2 cm below the lowest contact point with my arms on the pads.
The top of the bottle is almost exactly parallel and even with the top of my forearms and the gap between my forearms and the bottle is about 1 cm.
There are different sponges available. The black one I have is from CeeGees, and it does NOT splash except under extreme circumstances.
The still-major flaw is/was that the black "filter" that goes under the cap and on top of the yellow sponge shrinks if you run it through the dishwasher, so it won't fit under the cap just right any more! But even without the black "filter", the system is much improved, in my opinion.