I have an old steel frame road bike, dating from 1980. Its not rare or special, but its very like the one I rode to high school in the late 80s.
Problem: There are no bottle cage mounts, so my solution is to drill 4 holes and fit rivnuts to suit the standard bottle mounts. Rivnuts are also known as nutserts, and look like this:
There's a special rivet tool that compresses the fitting while preserving the thread. I have one on order, and it looks like this.
So other than drilling the bare minimum diameter holes in the frame, what else do I need to consider?
- paint or treat the raw steel edges of the drilled hole?
- locate holes properly on the centerline or fractionally left, away from the drivetrain?
- use mixed-epoxy on the insert as an insertion lube plus it will be a waterproofing layer when in use
- my nutserts are smoothbore, not ribbed as per the example - would this matter?