DVC45

This is how my rack bag looked after a couple of miles on wet road. Thanks to DT's castrated back fender.


What type/brand of fenders do I get for full coverage?

Thanks again!

tgzzzz

Sir, a caution: I sense that was a disparaging remark re the "castrated" DT fender. That kind of loose talk regarding any DT equipment on these forums may well draw fire. It's apparently OK to say nice things but not the other stuff. As a stopgap, I'll send you my ... ah... abreviated fender. Tape it to yours. That way at least one of us will have an adequate mudguard. You can have my kickstand too.

DVC45

' don't care. If its going to induce a design change on their product, I'll stick with my remark. Perhaps, I like the bike, that's why I kept it. Heck, some other, more expensive brands don't even come with any.

As for the stopgap....send it all to me!

awetmore

Planet Bike fenders are easy to find and have reasonably good coverage in 20".

SKS makes even better 20" fenders, but they aren't well distributed in the US and are hard to find. I bought a pair from a Moulton dealer. Here is a photo of those fenders:


The RANS 20" fenders (sold for their Rocket SWB) have tons of coverage and full wrap around the front wheel (you can cut them shorter if you want). The mounting hardware is designed for their bikes, but it can be modified to work with a folder. This shows them mounted on a Rocket with the front fender cut down to more normal dimensions:


Delta made my favorite 20" fenders, but stopped around 2000. It's too bad, they were inexpensive, light, and had good coverage:

DVC45

Nice Bikes Awetmore!

What do you guys think of Apex Design fenders?

Kabir

If you keep the rack all the time, you can just strap a piece of plastic under it to stop the kicked-up water. Personally, I don't use a rack. So I use a piece of plastic cut from my large shampoo bottle and use velcro patch+stationary tape to make an extension on the rear fender. It helps prevent my butt from getting wet. I also made a mud flap using rubber stair tread for the front fender.

I also think it would be nice to have a full coverage fender come with the bike. The current rear fender is pretty much useless. After all, it is harder to find 20-inch fenders than those 26-inch/700cc brothers.

jur

I bought mudguards (isn't a fender set something that a car is mounted between?) from Greenspeed, they have a US shop as well.

makeinu

Interesting. What do you like better about the SKS fenders? When I was mudguard shopping I couldn't really discern a significant difference between the SKS mudguards and the Planet Bike Hardcore Freddy Fenders.

The Planet Bike mudguards were significantly cheaper, so I bought those, but the SKS fenders are much easier to find. Since the SKS fenders are the kind used by Dahon, any Dahon dealer should have them. I'm surprised you think they aren't well distributed.

DVC45

In my limited knowledge, mudguards, are just that, its a device that guards against mud. They're often seen attatched to fenders. No?

BTW, I bought the Planet Bike ones for $10 each at Amazon. I thought its a good deal.

DVC45

Bring on the flood!

Loch

I just added an extension to the DT fender and it's seems to work fine.

DVC45

What material did you use?

Loch

Maybe I cheated, I had an old broken plastic fender (mtb type I think) lying around. I just cut about an 8 inch section off. Drilled two very small holes on either side of the fender and extension then zip tied them together with those small zip ties.

What ever you'd use you want to keep it light, so it doesn't weigh it down and rub the wheel. I would imagine part of a plastic milk jug would make a pretty good extension.

If the old fender I used hadn't been black, you could hardly tell it wasn't there originally.

Kabir

Could you post a picture of it? Guess what? I just picked up an old plastic mtb fender while I was having a after-lunch walk.

Loch

Here you go, I've transfered the fenders to my Speed pro, same basic idea, the downtube gives a little more coverage because the rear triangle is bigger and it sets the fender farther back.

Not as full as the others, but it keeps the spray off of the back, etc.





Edit to add: Here's a pic of the SKS fenders (16 inch, same as 20 just smaller). I think they are some of the best looking fenders around.

Kabir

Wow, plenty neat work. Thanks, Loch.

I wonder if it will rub the tire if the tire is 2.00 wide. I am using a 1.95-inch BMX tire on the back and it seems the clearance is very small. I may attach the extension on the top of the fender, instead of putting it below.

Loch

The downtube has 1.75 wide Marathons and the clearance was fine. 2.0 might be too much, should work just as well with the extension on the top.

EvilV

In the UK a 'fender' used to be a kind of fire guard that stopped hot cinders falling onto the carpet from an open fireplace.



Still, we know what we mean here.


That looks great. I might look out some of those for my Pashley - Moulton TSR30. Problem is they won't fit with the marathon tyres. I'd need to go back from 40x406 tyres to 28x406 to fit them in. At the moment, I'm not riding it in the wet. It's too precious.

How do the Big Apples have such a low rolling resistance when they are so fat and run at quite low pressures? They are reputed to be very fast. I'd like to see some figures.

DVC45

The Dahon Firebolt (Curve?) looks so cute.

Loch

Thanks, yes it's a Curve SL. Firebolt is it's personal name .

DVC45

Good one! I actually thought they made a special Firebolt model.

EvilV

You should register the n ame and try and sell it to them. Somone else has all the useful looking firebolt domain names.

awetmore

All things being equal wide tires are faster. In the Bicycle Quarterly tire tests we measured the Mistuboshi Trim line (38-584, 650B x 38mm) as being about the same speed as many popular 23-622 (700x23) racing tires.

Low pressure helps because it means that you don't need to make the casing so strong. A thinner more supple tire has lower rolling resistance.

Pressure makes little difference on average roads. We measured one of our tires (28mm wide Panaracer/Rivendell) from 105psi down to 25psi and the handling issues caused problems before we measured noticable performance differences. Most tire testing is done on steel drums where pressure does make a large difference, but no roads are as smooth as those steel drums.

One of our biggest learnings was that tires which feel fast often don't measure fast, and visa-versa. The Avocet Cross in 700x35 was actually tested quite fast but it is a pretty awful tire to ride.