QCycle Blog: Exustar USA–The Necessities of Bike

Welcome back to the Q Cycle Funny Foto Kaption Kontest. I am pleased to report that following last week’s Corporate Mescal Binge, the staff is more less fully recovered and no one seems to have lost fingers and toes in the process, although there are some interesting new tattoos to be seen around Q Cycles Global Headquarters this week.

A Hula Dancer, Frank?

If you’re not familiar with the Kontest rules, they’re available here, but the idea is simple:

Each Friday  (or so) , we show a new Foto  and a sample Kaption. You write a funnier one via the Comments feature (You can also play via Facebook if you prefer).  Funniest Kaption wins that week’s very cool Exustar schwag.

And speaking of schwag, here’s this week’s:

BC60WH CARBON FIBER WATER BOTTLE CAGE WHITE

Durable, lightweight, carbon fiber water bottle cage in white. $49.95. Wait. What? White carbon fiber? Um, yes. It’s become a trade term in recent years, so let’s debunk that particular myth right now:

Carbon is not white, it’s black. (Unless you compress it enough, and then it becomes clear, in which case it’s known as “a diamond”.) So two things:

1. Exustar’s “White Carbon” is actually long-filament thermoset glass fiber. It’s cut from sheets of pre-preg, wrapped around a special mandrel and cured. (It could be done with thermoplastics, too, but there’s no particular advantage.)

2. This is good. High-impact glass (usually E-Glass) is a better material to make things like bottle cages out of because a thin sheet of it has better impact resistance than the same thickness of carbon, and because a bottle cage doesn’t need nearly as much strength as, say, a down tube.

3. Black “carbon” cages aren’t really carbon either. They (and other non-structural “carbon” bits ) are just glass, or even short-fiber (also called flox)-embedded plastic with a printed cover layer that looks like woven carbon.

Our Exustar “white carbon” cage makes a stylish and high-performance addition to your machine. It’s lightweight, lasts forever, doesn’t lose shape, and, now that you know the story, provides you with a nice bit of on-upmanship on the Sunday Morning Ride.

But back to this week’s Kontest:

Our Kaption: Naw, Fridges are for wusses. This here’s a Kegerator!

Your (much funner) Kaption: (Just click the Comment button)

You can also play the Kontest on our Facebook page.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 18th, 2010 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.