Velo Orange or Berthoud for fenders.

I have the Velo Orange Zepplin's on my Disk Trucker (56cm frame/700c wheel). They are GREAT. If you are good with tools and making things you can do them yourself. I had the local bike shop order them in, along with tires, and they were more than welcoming for me to sit there in the shop and install it all - took about an hour to match up the fenders well enough to test fit (put them on without cutting/drilling to check clearances before taking home - full install details below). My concern was frame and tire clearance with the fenders. My situation may, or may not, be unique - I have rough roads where I am and I found the 37mm wide stock tire to be a bit too rough - I couldn't air them down much to soften the ride. So I got 42's instead - much better and less risk of bottoming out the rim.

Being a 42cm frame, your bike has the 26" wheels. You should have a lot of good options for fenders in that size. One big piece of advice I can pass on is to get stainless steel fenders. By the time your first set of plastic/poly fenders breaks and you end up replacing them you will wish you had spent a little more up front for the stainless ones.

I wasn't much of a fan of the Zepplin fenders because I didn't like the style, but I will tell you that they are tough and I am glad I have them, as opposed to a contoured smooth fender like the Berthouds. I caught a stick a few weeks back that wrapped right up in the spokes of my front wheel. It almost threw me off the bike, I wasn't expecting it and I was riding with my palms resting on the handlebars - my thumbs weren't wrapped around the bar. I immediately stopped to check things out. I figured I had broken spokes after the impact. When I was on the ride I didn't notice any fender damage, all I looked for was spoke damage. When I got home I found what happened to the fender - the stick that got wrapped up in the spokes jammed against the stays in the rear, pushing in the stays and pushing the fender up nearly buckling the fender. The Zepplin stayed rigid with its corrugations and rolled edges. I bent the stays back and have been riding like that fine ever since. When I get some time I will take the wheel off and see if I can work out the deformation in the fender. Nothing is creased or buckled so it should be a real easy job.

The fenders will take some work to install - they are a very customized fit, you can't just take a fender out of the box, slap it on, and away you go. Mine required a lot of tweaking to get the angles right and line up with the tires right. Don't skimp on the mounts. The rear fender needs the stays, the frame bolt at the bottom bracket, AND the frame bolt on the top with the angle adapter. The top bolt/angle adapter requires drilling the hole, but you have to pay close attention to where you are drilling as it will affect the line-up of the fender - also you may want to drill through the top side down, vs. inside out - you may end up with a more round hole, my drill bit walked a bit when I went through the inside = not a round hole. Another note is the front fender. I bought a 1/4"x20 stainless bolt and lock nut from Lowes that passed through the bottom of the fork (you will see what I mean when you look at yours - has a star pattern flat around the hole to lock on to a reflector mount). There is a bolt with a hole in the top that will fit the 1/4" bolt. The one in the kit attaches to the top of the fender and the one I got from lowes passes through the hole in the fork. The large flat washer that came with the kit I used on top of the front fender - and I coated it with about 3-4 layers of electric tape to insulate it from the fork frame (keep the paint in tact and rattling down). It works great. In regards to the stays - measure twice, or 3 times, cut ONCE. Put the fenders on as a mock-up and use the frame clips as a guide for where to cut the stays. If anything, cut the stays 1/8" to 1/4" longer than you think you need. When you put them on for good you can use the angle of the stays to adjust the tire clearance (push the rear stays up at an angle = some spring force to push up on the back of the fender = tilts the rear of the rear fender away from the tire some).

I don't have any comments on commercial fenders. I have a cheap solid steel one (steel wire, not tube) from Amazon for now. I am going to work on making my own racks here when I get time. 10mm diameter tubing racks seem to be the better ones. I got .405" OD tube, just a hair over 10mm.