Water Bottle Holder for Nordic Track Skier Exercise (Quick and Easy to Attach and Remove)

After getting to love cross-country skiing last winter, I recently purchased a used Nordic Track ski machine. The more I used it, the more I wished it had an attached water bottle holder. I saw a few general-purpose, clamp-on water bottle holders available online, but at least the ones I found looked like they might easily pop off in the middle of a workout, due to the rectangular post of the Nordic Track. And besides, as an avid cyclist, I have spare water bottle cages floating around, and even more besides, I like to make stuff. So here's an approach to adapting a bike-intended water bottle cage for the Nordic Track.

1. Bicycle water bottle cage (the standard kind with 2 holes to mount onto bike frame) If you have a cheap one on your bike and it doesn't grip your bottles well, here's a perfect excuse to replace it and use it here!
2. Small piece of wood, mine is 4" x 1 1/4" x 3/8" thick. Anything similar will work if you adjust the screw sizes accordingly.
3. Hook-and-loop (for example, Velcro) cinch strap. Preferably NOT the elastic style. I used a 1" x 12". Anything over 8" should work for my choice of wood piece. Sometimes these are used as cable ties. Obtain at hardware store, or Amazon sells assortments that come in handy.
4. Machine screws and nuts to fit thru the 2 water bottle cage holes with a length to almost reach thru the wood. Mine are 6-32 x 3/4 inch. Alternately, use 2 wood screws.
5. Rubber strip, about 3 1/2" long. I used a piece of an old bicycle inner tube. Anything similar would work. I suspect that 5 or 6 layers of electrical tape might do the job, too!
6. Drill and bits to make two holes for the #6 machine screws, plus either a regular bit or countersink bit (if you're lucky enough to have 'em!) to countersink the heads of the screws (about 1/4"). If you're using wood screws, a drill bit to drill two pilot holes.
7. Screwdriver to tighten the screw type you've chosen.

1. Mark the wood for two holes to match up with the mounting holes on the water bottle cage.
2. Drill the two holes with the bit matched to the screws you are using. (first photo)
3. If you're using the machine screw approach, drill two shallow 1/4-inch countersink holes. (second photo)

1. One of the nice features of this holder concept is that the cinch strap is securely clamped between the wood and the water bottle cage, so that it's easy to attach and remove the bottle holder from the ski machine.
2. The first photo shows how the pieces are clamped together. Be sure that the rough side of the "velcro" is facing toward the water bottle as shown!
3. The water bottle cages I've seen usually have a roomy indentation for screw heads next to the bottle, so it works well to put the nut on that end, as shown in the closeup, second photo. If your water bottle holder has a very shallow indentation, you may have to put the nut on the wood end, instead of as shown here.
4. Assemble the "sandwich" of parts as shown in the first two figures, and tighten the screws to clamp the cinch strap into place.
5. It's simpler if you use wood screws - just use them to attach the bottle cage to the wood.
6. The third photo shows the resulting assembly. Almost done!

This step might not seem like a big deal, but it makes a HUGE difference on how well your Nordic Track bottle holder will stay solidly attached to the machine when you insert and remove the bottle during use! It amazes me how much friction the rubber produces with just the force of the cinch strap. I used hot glue to attach the rubber strip to the wood, but you could do something stronger (especially if you punch holes in the rubber to be able to remove the screws/nuts at some later time.)

Hold the rubber side against any of the four sides of the main support post, wrap the cinch strap around the post and through the buckle, and pull tight to attach.

I've been using either the front or side edges of the support post.

I haven't found many Nordic Track ski Instructables on the site, but there are a couple of note: I experienced some slippage on one of my machine's drive rollers when I first got it, and found this helpful maintenance/repair instructable.

The original speed/distance/time readout on my used skier isn't working quite right. I'm currently working on a project to make a modern interface to measure and display workout statistics from my Nordic Track ski workouts, but if I weren't counting on that to be ready soon, here is an interesting way to re-purpose a bike computer to display Nordic Track speed, workout time, etc. Since many of these ski machines are 30 years old or so, I'll bet a lot of other people are also having issues with the original electronics!