Winter Cycling - SKS fenders rant

I need to rant about my SKS fenders. I bought a pair this fall for my winter commuter bike, and after 250 miles of street and bike path use, both fenders are broken.

The front fender broke just three rides after I put the fenders on. I was walking the bike and I accidentally kicked the front mudflap, not hard I don't think, but the fender snapped in two. It fixed up OK with clear packing tape, so I decided it was no big deal, you could barely tell it had broken.

The rear fender broke on my commute home Friday. I went over a small bump and doing! the fender broke away from the rivets attaching it to the fender stays.

I'm really disappointed with the quality of these fenders, to break from normal wear & tear when they are still so new.

I'm wondering if the cold made them brittle. It was about 10-15F when both fenders broke.

Are plastic fenders a poor choice for winter use? Has anyone had similar things happen?

EDIT: The LBS will let me return these for store credit. They carry SKS and Bontrager plastic fenders. Are the Bontragers (which are more expensive) better quality and more likely to survive the winter, or do I need metal fenders?

you want something made from polycarbonate/lexan. instead of brittle ABS plastic.

which model are they? you don't mention them

You can always look up the glass transition tempreture on matweb.com (good material science engineering reference).

I have full SKS fenders and I did just break the rear a few days ago. It broke right at to bottom where it bolts to the chain stay cross support. Hockey tape solved the problem

which model are they? you don't mention them

Good point

My SKS (http://www.bikesomewhere.com/bikesomewhere.cfm/product/282/4248/21031?g=1) commuter fenders - no model name shown, described as "chromoplastic"

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u259/sekaijin/SKSfenders.jpg

And the Bontragers (http://www.bontrager.com/model/04684/en) my LBS also carries - Approved model, described as "chromium plastic" (same thing as "chromoplastic?)

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u259/sekaijin/Bontragerfenders.jpg


you want something made from polycarbonate/lexan. instead of brittle ABS plastic.

Which kind is "chromoplastic" and "chromium plastic"? (I have a guess)

That model of SKS fender looks iffy to me given that they're supported in only two places.

I used the SKS P-35 last winter. I broke the rear one washing the bike in the shower stall. The bike was standing on its back wheel, resting on the fender. I tipped the bike one side to the other, and that was it. That's certainly outside the design parameters though.

I have quite a bit of toe overlap on my bike and bashing the front fender with my feet was never a problem.

Due to the shower stall issue, this winter I'm using PlanetBike Cascadia fenders. I'm liking them a lot. And they hold up to the shower stall test just fine. On an icy, rutted turn yesterday, I jammed the front into the tire and the hardware caught in the tread blocks of the Nokian. Can you say "screeching halt"? The fender seemed none the worse for the experience.

Like the Bonty in the pic above, both these fenders are supported in three places on the front fender, four places on the rear.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2637146378_1b456298a5.jpg

I've got SKS fenders on my LHT that have been going strong for 4 years+. They've taken loads of abuse and other than being dirty and scratched up they are fine. I've abused some Planet Bike Cascadia fenders for a shorter time and they are doing well also.

I've heard that chromoplastics are prone to this kind of behaviour in the very cold.

Velo Orange (VO), among others, makes heavy-duty steel fenders. those won't break. they might rust, but hey, fenders are supposed to be sacrificial like that.

I myself have no love for the SKS P-# fenders; i had horrible issues with what might be described as "resonance" issues when riding with only one hand on the bicycle (and the other hand fishing something out of a pocket or adjusting a light/mirror, etc.); the problem was the weight of the stays in relation to the lightness of the fender.

I switched to Honjo/VO type Aluminum fenders (they don't crack, but they do dent!), which use lower-footprint P-clamps (i.e., take up less space), but don't have the SKS emergency release feature (which never worked for my anyway, mine were so stiff). they're kind of retro-sexy, while being slightly longer and thus more useful.

Velo Orange (VO), among others, makes heavy-duty steel fenders. those won't break. they might rust, but hey, fenders are supposed to be sacrificial like that.

Weightwise, that begins to be an issue, if one needs wide fenders. My rear SKS fenders would eventually always break by the seatstay bridge, seemingly because the amplitude of vibrations maximized somewhere there. In coping with this, I found that a urethane glue works great with the chromoplastic fenders and that problems, whether in the seatstay or chainstay bridge areas, disappear for fenders strengthened in those areas by gluing together pieces.

Regarding Planet Bike fenders I urge everybody to stay away from plastic fenders with no safety releases, which seems regularly to fall on deaf ears. Apparently, most people need to take a flight on their own before appreciating the cause-effect relation.

I bought a pair of those Bontragers for my winter bike this year. They're...ok. Seem light but fragile in this weather. A big crack appeared one day at the front end of the front fender, makes no difference to function but there's a big chunk missing there now. In the rear, one of the clips that holds the stay to the fender broke, but that's probably because I never bothered to tighten the set screws; I just held it in place and tightened the screw to put it back together.

I picked them because they were $10 cheaper than the SKSs and still big enough for my studded 1.75s, but I wouldn't buy them again.

I have been running SKS for years. I have had one pair since the late 1980's which just recently broke, but not catestrophically. Frankly, I really like them alot, and they are the widest ones available (P-65's; they BARELY make it around my Nokian 2.3's on snow-cat rims). I do have some narrower ones, but they do not make it out in the winter (road bikes).

I also have several Planent Bike versions. Again, no complaints and no problems. I do not understand the mention of the SKS having fewer mounts. Though the rear mounts are the same, only the SKS and PB Cascadia have three mounts on the front (versus the standard PB two on the front). I have found the three-mounting points to be much better, particularly with bumpy roads.

I've been using a pair of ESGE fenders since 1987 -- I believe that's the same brand now called SKS. Mine are silver with black pinstripes. No cracks, no problems in 21 years.

if only your shop carried planet bike fenders. they're made from polycarbonate and I have never managed to destroy them after a couple hundred toe strikes in the cold.
polycarbonate will deflect a lot before it bends, it's very difficult to snap

if only your shop carried planet bike fenders.

I was kind of thinking the same thing ... but I went there today and got the Bontragers. We'll see how they do. They do have more support points than the SKSs they are replacing, so maybe that will cut down on vibrations and help them last longer.

The guys at the LBS said, "if you ride through Wisconsin winters, fenders are just something you need to replace every year."

I've had the SKS P35 series fenders for about 21 months now without any problems. I ride nearly every day. In the past few weeks I've seen a handful of days with temps down to 2F (without wind chill) and most commutes have been in the low to mid teens. Sorry to hear you've had such bad luck. I have PB fenders on the tandem and my wife's bike, but neither get extreame weather usage. The SKS mounting took longer and was a bit more work, but is far more elegant once installed. I also had a bad spill last year on rice road conditions where the bike (and I) went down hard. The rear pannier bags caught most of the bike's weight. The only thing that happend was that the rear supports had to be bent out a tiny bit to get the rear fender straight again.

Happy riding,
André