Here is a question that we get frequently: “how do I drill into my fork to add custom cage mounts”. Drilling into carbon and installing bosses is quite complicated and borderline dangerous, so tune in for our answer to this complex modification!
Dan: 00:02 Today’s #carbonqueries comes from Dave Williams and he’s asking, he wants to add bottle cage bosses to a carbon fork for touring bike. Have you guys had any success with drilling and gluing? Some insert in. I know it’s not factory, but it needs to store water around the fork legs for a bigger off road trip. This is a topic we brought up a number of times actually modifying fork. I mean it’s quite involved. It’s modifying forks, adding cages and drilling into carbon. So kind of an involved #carbonqueries
but we have experience with all three of those things.
Shawn: 00:32 Yeah. And I’ve literally done all three. We’ve modified a lot of forks over the years, mainly for personal use or for our own internal testing. And basically it comes down to we don’t really do it externally, you know, we’ve, we’ve added on a lot of things. Adding stuff to a fork opens a myriad problems, right? A drilling is just a NO you heard it here.
Dan: 00:56 We do not suggest advise you drilling into your fork to modify it. In fact, when we put on cage mountains like we did those, anything cage mount sort of Lael wilcox, we had some thick flat plate machined. Yeah. Which we then bonded to the forks.
Shawn: 01:16 We didn’t have it to wrap it down to the surface or the same thing. Stuff we’ve done with rob English, we bond on. And the reason why is yeah, and you’re not drilling holes in a fork is a scary concept. Yeah. I mean, if you think of the surface area of a drill hole, which is seven point two millimeters for a rivnut 7.6 if you are using a different one. So a big hole when you’re talking about the circumference of a tube.
Shawn: 01:44 And the downside that fork is, boy, you put a big old hole in it for, you know, you just took away 20 percent of the strength of that area and maybe 30 percent depending on the fork flag, right? A lot and a lot. Um, and when you put them on the side, you know, when you think of the stress is on the side, it’s when you’re climbing and pushing down hard, that’s when you’re getting that rocking force back and forth and think of how your fork legs can be kind of wobbling set-aside, right? On some level. And that’s when, that would probably break the other liability to think about when you’re putting stuff on a fork of, you’re just going to strap them down as well. We’ve seen a lot of hose clamps, solutions, carbon fork is not meant to be hose clamped, right? It’s not necessarily designed to take this for some repression for.
Shawn: 02:27 Yeah. So that’s another one, like don’t do that either. Right. And it may be fine on your Surly cross check fork it because you’re riding around plumbing pipes, but the government fork isn’t meant for that know. Um, so there’s a lot of good. I mean, three years ago we would say sorry, but now there’s so many options, right? Yeah, you have to buy a new fork, but, but you get what you want. And there’s, like you said, there’s a lot of options. Yeah. You can buy the nine or fork aftermarket, right? I’m salsa. Has their forks out for the whiskey also have a fork with mounts on it now. I don’t think a fender mounts fender mounts. That’s right. So not. But there’s a. You can buy the Rodeo labs was just gonna say that they collect the spork yeah. I don’t think there’s a road fork it, but I know that many people who are touring with bottle cages on a road possible, and I would probably do it myself, but there’s aftermarket options nowadays and I know people always want the cheapest solution, but it’s not always the safest solution.
Dan: 03:27 What’s your goal when you’re off road? You don’t want to put holes in your fork to go on a long off road trip because it’s not safe. And B, because you’re introducing variable variable which can then lead to a failure. You know if you’re going to go do the Oregon Outback or something rattles out, are those a carbon source and they have holes in them.
Shawn: 03:48 There’s a whole plate on the inside before. Typically aluminum, a backplate right, and that’s how they do it. So that’s one unit, so it’s not going to fail and that’s not something that you can. Don’t overload them either. Yeah. Follow what they say weight wise? So that’s pretty important. They rip off or if something flies out to when you’re riding comes out of your front wheel, where’s it going? Probably into your front wheel. Comes out of your front fork, I’m sure.
Dan: 04:09 Yeah. Comes out in front and for going into your front wheel, going into front wheel or it’s your back wheel as and as somebody who has had one of those gnarly crashes, how to go terribly. Yeah. Yeah. Or don’t put any. I know I’m not a big fan of putting bags up in the front fork either because bags are flexible and have straps, straps, and that’s another thing that could, you know,
Shawn: 04:34 I think of, think of like wood shop safety. No neckties know ponytails and you’re spinning on. Yeah, keep your long veered away from the lay of metal heads. Need not apply. So I mean, again, this is a hard question. No real great answers for. The only thing that we can definitely tell you is don’t just drill and don’t just able to do for work. Don’t just drill into carbon. It’s going to end poorly.
Shawn: 04:57 It might not end poorly. The first 10 rides, it’s eventually going to go south and that’s when you’re going to see today. Yeah, and yet again, there’s aftermarket options. They’re not the cheapest, but they’re not ultra expensive. I mean some of those forks are. I mean it’s 300 bucks,
Dan: 05:12 but let’s say even if you wanted to do it like we did with with labels, fork, you have to get some. If you don’t have the ability to CNC flat plate carbon yourself, then you have to buy that. Then you have to buy the DP, then you have to buy all the rivets. Then you have to bond it on. Then you need to lay up around it and finish it. At that point you’re going to be in more money getting all of the materials and just getting. You would need a whole processing facility out. Everybody has those, so I know it’s probably a. You know the Super Square answer, but be safe. Get a new fork if you really want to do that. Otherwise it’s not worth trying to add mounts to your carbon fork. Now that aftermarket solutions and again, were squares, but that’s what we would suggest you to do, and failure’s not an option.