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Riding roads in rain/snow/mud

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Riding roads in rain/snow/mud

Old 10-07-04, 02:08 PM
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Riding roads in rain/snow/mud

I've found that one of my challenges is keeping moisture and mud thrown from the tires off of my clothing. Once the moisture thrown from the tires gets on my clothing, the wet areas become an area vulnerable to exposure. Water from the front wheel will often splash onto my face and eyes making travel even more miserable and dangerous.

What was unthinkable in my early years of cycling is now being strongly considered.

Anyone use fenders on their roadbikes? Any thoughts or recommendations?
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Old 10-07-04, 09:32 PM
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I mostly encounter rain (only one day of snow so far) and no mud on my bike.
I use a Headland Backscratcher from altrec.com (13$+free shipping) for my rear as I got tired of my back getting coated with the rooster tail of black water from the city streets. The front doesn't bother me as much most of the time the downtube catches most of it. The really really bad days I will just ziptie on a milk jug cut to fit on the downtube.

If you don't mind spending money there is a really nice looking set of front and rear ones that work with the minimum clearance with roadbike brake calipers. There is a post of them somewhere on this forum but I can't remember the name of them for the life of me. They look like half fenders (coverage on one side of the caliper only) if anyone knows what I am talking about.
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Old 10-08-04, 09:15 AM
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I have fenders on my Specialized Sequoia. I bought for year-round commuting so I had the LBS put them on (along with a rack) right when I bought it.

I have no idea what brand they are, but they're the same basic style as these: https://www.planetbike.com/fenders.html . However, if you don't have the rack/fender eyelets at the bottom of the fork, they may not be an option.

I prefer the full-size fenders to the rear seat-post thingies like the backscratcher, because the latter only protects you and not your drive train. Winter mud and grime can chew up a drive train pretty quickly.

On my old bike, I have clip-on fenders that attached at the top of the fork only, and were easy to remove. They had about the same coverage as my new fenders, but they weren't very stable -- occasionally they would drag on the tire and I'd have to stop and wiggle them around a bit to fix it.

Last edited by elbows; 10-08-04 at 10:55 AM.
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Old 10-08-04, 10:26 AM
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Fenders, fenders and a mudflap at the end of the front fender. No complaints afterwards.
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Old 10-08-04, 11:14 AM
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The word "no-brainer" springs to mind. If you ride wet, muddy roads in the cold, use fenders.
SKS race blades are suposed to fit racing bikes. Zip ties can solve a lot of mounting problems.
Ideally, you will get a winter training bike which has clearance and fittings for proper (SKS chromoplastic) fenders and winter tyres, and will save your nice raceday bike from abuse.
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Old 10-08-04, 01:41 PM
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I have a set of fenders on my commuter/tourer. I also found that mud flaps go the extra distance and help keep 'overspray' off. I tried a couple of different things for mud flaps. Recently on a ride I came across a truck inner tube. Grabbed that and cut out some really cool mud flaps. Attached to the fenders with rivets. It kinda adds to the personal geekiness of my bike.
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Old 10-12-04, 08:37 PM
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Come October when I can expect snow or rain at any time, I disappear into the garage for a few minutes and install my SKS fenders on the two bikes I will use through the winter.

Come March, they come off again.

As said above zip ties can make mounting easy, they also make the spring undressing easy.
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