Monkii clip advice

[doginabag]

I am looking at moving my water bottle from my frame to my handle bar stem. I have been really getting on well with the roller wheels, but the only downside is that the current bottle locations means that I have to remove my bag when folded.

The obvious solution is to mount the bottle to the handle bar stem with a monkii clip, but it isn't clear to me if you have to use the monkii cage with it, or if you can fit any standard cage?

At £18 for the clip and another £18 for the cage it seems quite a lot for what it is, and I don't like the idea of a velcro strap, it seems you have to stop any time you want a drink. If if cant hold a standard cage, does anyone use an alternative?

 

[Kell]

I used to use one - I now have a camel back - and I believe you can put a standard cage on it.

The disadvantage of that being that your drink bottle will be upside down when the bike's folded and will, possibly, leak.

As for the velcro, they're designed so that you remove the bottle and cage in one go to drink. So no need to stop. The best place I found to mount it (for me) was on the back of the stem, but around to the right. Took a bit of trial and error, but means it doesn't stick out when folded.

The other thing is to not tighten it too much. Mine cracked and is currently held together with zip ties...

 

[Kell]

This is where I had mine - though in this guise, I was using it to house the battery for the cree light.

Note the zip ties...

 

[Cycleops]

This is the obvious solution:

 

[doginabag]

Thanks for the info. I have also found some videos which make it clearer. I hadn't appreciated that the cage and bottle remain together and removed from the cleats.
The cleats appear to be simple plastic discs which would ordinarily be fixed tot he standard frame fixings, and the monkii clip is simply bracket to give somewhere to locate these for bikes that don't have the fixing points. So it should be fine to unto the cleats from the clip and fix a standard cage.

I am going to pop down to the nearest bike shop on my lunch and see if they have anything that fits the bill. If not I think I might try a monkii clip with a standard bracket and if it is a bit leaky, get the cage for it later.

 

[doginabag]

Well cycle surgery had diddly squat, thought about walking a bit further up to Holborn Evans then remembered just how small a store it is and decided it would likely be a waste of effort.

Got back to work and oops....

 

[Kell]

I think once you own a Brompton, you have to stop letting silly little things like 'money' get in the way of buying new stuff.

I've never owned a bike before where everything costs so much money to replace - even third party manufacturers know they have a captive audience.

 

[mitchibob]

I wouldn't waste money on another monkii clip. I found some far better and cheaper SKS bottle holders that do a fantastic job with just velcro to hold onto the stem. Haven't had a bottle eject from either yet, and even manage to keep hold of full 750ml bottles when folding the bars down. Monkii clip lost a bolt on first ride, difficult to get bottle in and out. Just useless, overpriced, rubbish.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SKS-Adapte...=1537386304&sr=8-5&keywords=sks+bottle+holder

 

[doginabag]

A little update. The cage arrived but they sent a pair of cleats instead of the clip so had to wait another couple of days for that to get sent out.

If the clip and cage together were around the £20 mark I wouldn't have a bad word to say, but at nearly £50 with postage it really isn't value for money in my opinion. I would have hoped for something a little more refined but there we go.

It does the job well enough but one minor issue specific to me is the increased folded width with the bottle attached. I store my Brompton in the void between back to back seats on the train during my commute and with the bottle attached it is a struggle to get the bike in there. With the new trains being rolled out with an even narrower voide it doesn't fit at all.

So I started thinking about alternative places the bottle could be mounted when the bike is folded. A second monkii clip would be neat, but at £18 a go I wasn't going to buy another. Instead I put the spare cleats that were originally sent to good use along with the strap on mounts I was using previously and came up with this.

Keeps the bike just as compact as it used to be and I can keep using the same cubby holes on the train.

 

[ukoldschool]

how to you get to it whilst cycling though?

 

[doginabag]

how to you get to it whilst cycling though?

When cycling the bottle is on the handlebar stem as normal. When folded I remove the bottle and instead of turning it over and reattaching it to the handlebar stem, I attach it to the seat post frame. It couldn't stay there when unfolded anyway as it would clash with the rear triangle.

 

[ukoldschool]

seems a ridiculous amount of faff for a water bottle to me... but if it works for you then

is there any reason you couldn't just put it in here and save all the aggro of 2 different set of clips etc?

 

[doginabag]

I already use he pockets and a mild case of OCD wont allow me to change their purpose now. Besides, the way the pockets zip getting a bottle back in while riding would be a faff in itself.

I had a zero faff solution before, that being a regular bottle cage strapped tot he main frame. But that meant that when folded I has to remove my bag and carry it separately, it's probably the engineer in me but I wanted to maximise functionality which meant that bottle location had to go. Moving to the handlebar stem is the next obvious location and the monkii clip system solves the problem of drippy upside down bottle.
But that then created the new problem of the bike no longer fitting in the storage void on the train, hence the second mounting point while folded.

On the faff-o-meter scale the additional faff of using a monkii clip is cancelled out by not having to carry the bag separately, and the using the second mounting point is really no different to using one mounting point and inverting the bottle.

 

[ukoldschool]

buy a better bottle that doesn't leak when turned upside down maybe?

 

[doginabag]

buy a better bottle that doesn't leak when turned upside down maybe?

Doesn't resolve the issue of fitting it in the storage space on the train.
Im not sure why you are seemingly so intent in proving it to be too much work to have been worth while, it was only a 2 minute job with a screwdriver.