Restrap Side Release Bottle Cage: Rethinking Your Hardest Working Accessory

Water is brilliant. In fact, I don't think I could live without it! Many of us spend a lot of time considering our EDCs (Every Day Carrys) on our bike, browsing the web for nice tools, tubeless repair plugs, fancy pumps, trawling lists of products that rarely get used, while the humble yet hard working bottle cages can sometimes get forgotten or fall foul to our desire for fancy light weight trinkets.

Water itself is just a thing you need to carry. You can't make it lighter, or better and it's an absolute essential for surviving and enjoying a good ride. Arguably, your bidon and cage combo is the hardest working accessory on any bike. Water is the heaviest thing you need to carry with you on any ride and, while it's not a fundamental component of your bicycle, your hydration carrying solution is an essential add on. It also needs to be easy for you to access and store while you're riding. If your hydration carrying system fails on either of these counts, you can end up severely dehydrated, which will ruin any ride. It doesn't get nearly the credit it deserves.

Often we'll build a new bike and just slap on any old cage we have in the spares box, or we'll get carried away looking for super lightweight or sexy coloured ones as the finishing touch to a bling build. I've definitely fallen foul to the temptation of ultralight carbon cage only to be annoyed by their lack of purchase on my precious life liquid, or have them crack and fail after a short time. I'm also a sucker for colour matched components and bottle cages are often where I start accessorising. Outside of creaky bottom brackets, there's little more annoying than a cage that doesn't hold your bottle well, but when they do their job right, you just forget about them. They're the unsung hero of bike accessories.

Restrap have come at this challenge with their typical innovative and practical mindset and I was keen to see if they'd brought anything new to the drinks party.

Restrap: What's In A Name?

Based in Yorkshire in the north of England, UK, Restrap are a company that started out making super practical pedal straps for commuters but have found home over the years making practical bags and accessories for carrying any gear you need while traveling by bike. They make pretty much everything in their range in house and produce items with a quality, hand-made feel but manage to do it without the artisan price tag. I've used many of their bags over the years and always been happy with their function and build quality. They prioritise function over form, and still manage to produce products that retain a look of classic elegance.

Diligent Design That's A Delight To Use

A bottle cage is a simple and useful accessory that doesn't need much improvement. It has one function and I want it to do that well. However, Restrap have put some thought into this and come up with some interesting ideas.

The cage is made from a durable, molded thermoplastic, with a side loading design that makes it easy to reach your water bottles, even in a tight space like small frames or when you have a partial frame bag. Usually side loading cages are either for the left or right side, but Restrap have added a smart foldable 'foot' at both ends, so you can actually mount the cage either way, depending on whether you prefer to load from the left or right. You don't have to worry about which side you like to grab from.

There's a slot for your cage bolts instead of the usual fixed holes, allowing for 25mm of back/forth adjustment, with a wider 'eye' at both ends so you can slide the cage over your bolt heads and then tighten them up. The cages come with a branded rubber grip strip that goes between your frame and the cage. There's also an orange rubber bottle retention band, clipped to the lower jaw. This can be hooked over the hook on the upper jaw of the cage to help provide extra security, or stored on a little knob under it when not needed.

All in all, there's a lot going on.

Fit and Forget?

Fitting a bottle cage it's generally pretty simple… bolt it on to the two 64mm spaced holes on your frame with supplied M5 hex bolts and you're good to go. The Restrap cage brings its clever feature set to make this both easy and provide some flexibility. The 'slots' for the bolts, with their larger holes at the end, slip over the bolt heads above and below the slots. When installing, you can fit your bolts first, saving you that faff of trying to navigate the cage itself when you thread the bolts in. Once your bolts are most of the way in, you can slot the cage over them and slide it into your desired position before you snug the bolts up to secure it. I initially dismissed the little rubber grip strip that sits between the cage and the frame as an unnecessary extra but, in practice, it's actually pretty helpful when setting your cage position and preventing it from sliding out of place while you tighten the bolts up.

It's worth noting that the cage does need to be snug as the wide locating holes mean you can end up losing your entire cage and bottle if it's not tight and able to rattle and slide its way down on your frame. Again, the rubber grip strip comes into play in helping prevent this. I'd also recommend using relatively wide headed bolts that distribute the load well, rather than eating into the plastic when tightening things up.

The other thing I discovered was that the cage doesn't suit all frames. The bolt slots are welcome, allowing some lateral adjustment to get your cage in the optimum position. However, the clever feature that allows you to mount the cage in either orientation puts the bolts pretty central rather than toward the bottom as they would be on most cages. Even with the 25mm of adjustment, this meant that I couldn't use these cages on my Ritchey hardtail, where the two cage mounts are pretty close together so the bottles ended up fowling on each other. You could get around this with a cage mount adapter from the likes of Wolf Tooth, that allows you to reposition your cage a little. This isn't in any way a deal breaker, but might cause some extra challenges on some frames.

In Use: Quietly Going About It's Business

While out on the bike, the Restrap cage does its job well, really well. It holds a bottle snuggly with no premature ejection anxiety on bumpy terrain, even without the protective rubber band in use. In fact I barely felt the need for the extra security of the retention loop, though it was a real comfort to know it was there should I hit some really rough stuff and want to be certain my bottles were going nowhere. We've all been there, getting to the bottom of a chonky descent only to find you've lost a bottle somewhere on the way down and are left with the dilemma of hiking back up to find it or continue on with a risk of dehydration. When I did lock the bottles with the rubber retention band, I was pleased to find out that you can still remove and replace your bottles easily enough, with just a little extra effort.

It holds a bottle snuggly with no premature ejection anxiety on bumpy terrain, even without the protective rubber band in use.

In general use, without the retention band engaged, grabbing and re-inserting a bottle from the restrap cage was a joy. Your bottle can be pulled out of the cage with ease and getting it back home is no problem, even when your attention is firmly focused on the rough trail ahead of you. Extra mention should be given to the perfect harmony between the Restrap cage and matching bottles, which fit into the cages beautifully. They're pretty standard plastic bidons with a pull push spout and screw on lid, but it's how well they mate with the cages that make the difference. They're a perfect companion and literally 'click' into place like a brand new set of cleats into your favourite pedal. I did try the cages with my preferred Camelbak Podium bottles and they fit fine without any signs of rattling out, but if you don't have a strong preference for bottles then the Restrap bottles make for a pretty convincing pairing.

While I've always thought of a bottle cage as a fit and forget item, I didn't expect to find regular joy from the installation features of the Restrap offering. On some of my bikes I occasionally run a full frame bag and the ease of loosening off the bolts without the need to fully remove them means you can slip the cage off the frame and snug them back up ready to fit your big trip luggage. After your adventure, it's just as easy to slot the cages back into place.

The Last Drop

I usually prefer elegant metal cages, but these impressed me more than I expected, because every feature is well designed and valuable.

The Restrap bottle cages are not only stylish and sturdy, but also adaptable and practical. They can hold different types of bottles, they keep your bottle secure and quiet, and the extra rubber loop adds more safety when necessary without ever being a nuisance. The cages are also simple to attach and detach, thanks to the smart bolt slot design and folding base at both ends, and they offer all this at a fair price point.

They'll suit almost any bike and look nice once they're installed. More importantly though, they'll make sure your water bottles stay put no matter where you go while allowing you to grab them easily when you need to hydrate.

Credits:

Words

Stuart Potter

Photos

Stuart Potter