Originally Posted by
wphamilton
Let's go into the front fender a bit more. It does throw up a rooster tail, which can be seen directly if you've ever had occasion to ride in the rain, in the dark at night, with a headlight on the handlebars. I've watched it, having just the back side of the fender like that, and gave it a little thought to take my mind off the cold rain which was a little miserable.
The water appears to be thrown off the tire straight up in front and then drops, but that's an illusion because the rider is moving forward at close to the horizontal speed of the water. It's actually thrown forward, at about a 20° angle from horizontal. Water flies off tangential to the tire's curve, not straight out from the center. So it's coming towards me really slowly as it falls (maybe 7 inches every second) and won't be hitting me in the face or shoulders. We'd get some spray down lower. But it's really not as bad as it looks, on the front fender anyway.
I've seen the same effect but would hesitate to call it a rooster tail. Again it might be tire dependent. The tires I have on the bike with the raceblades now have no tread and are pretty skinny. They don't pick up as much water.
One year I used Raceblades on a winter bike. It's why I got them really. I was squeezing 35 mm studded tires into an old road bike frame. There was barely enough room for the tires, let alone fenders. These tires were knobby and snow has different flight characteristics. On some days it was like I was riding a little snow thrower, - the snow was definitely being thrown forward by the tire and fender, - not up.