Surly cross check fork mounted bottle cage

This is a bottle cage (can also be used for cargo) that mounts on the forks of the Surly cross check. It might also work on other bikes but I have not tested it. Most likely the only thing that you would have to change is the length of the middle part (called "MidRod.stl", which is printed in orange in mine) and the length of the tubes. I have therefore uploaded the "MidRod" part as a .step file too so that you can modify it too if you need to. The cage is meant to hold water bottles up to roughly 1L, I tested it both with standard 650ml cycling bottles and 1L aluminium bottles (shown in the pictures).

The parts I printed in black are a hard TPU (I used shore A 98). The middle rod can be made of pretty much any rigid plastic (depending on your environmental conditions), I used PETG for mine but ABS / ASA / ... would also be perfectly suitable materials.

To assemble the bottle cage, you will need 8mm in diameter aluminium tubes, cut to the correct length (uses about 500mm of tube per bottle cage). In order to facilitate cutting the tubes to the right length and aligning the mounting holes correctly, I also designed a jig ("tubeJig.stl"), you simply need to push the tube up to the closed end of the jig, then cut it at the other end of the jig and drill the 2 holes marked at either end.

In terms of hardware, you will also need 5x M3x8mm countersunk bolts and 4x M3x16mm (or M3x18mm) countersunk bolts, with 9 accompanying M3 nuts.

To strap water bottles down to the cage I originally used fabric straps 10mm wide, they worked well but where somewhat annoying when putting the bottle in and out. I have since switched to using a soft plastic strap at the bottom (much wider and holds its shape even when the bottle is out) and a fabric strap up top. In either case, the straps should be at least 35cm long.

To attach the cage to your bike, I recommend using 2 large washers (5mm ID and 15mm OD).

The weight of the fully assembled cage (excluding mounting bolts) is 90g.