I just got fenders, Planet Bike Cascadia 45mm, for my new Mercier Kilo WT bike. I've installed fenders before but on a much older bike with some key differences in hardware related to their installation.

The instructions included with the fenders are more or less useless because they don't factor in brakes - I suppose they do this to avoid addressing the variety of brakes that exist.

So my question is, is it possible/am I supposed to install the fender to the rear side of the fork? Or do I need to remove the brakes and sandwich the hardware between the brakes and the fork? If the latter, what kind of tool(s) do I need to remove the brake?

IMG_1217..jpg

Remove the recessed nut that holds the brake and replace it with Sheldon Fender Nut.

+1 I wish I had known about these when I put fenders on my 'beater' road bike! I did as the OP mentioned--put the fender mount in front of the fork, between the caliper and spacer. It works, but raises the rear of the fender, and looks a little funky.

I've found that a lot of the L shaped brackets that come with the fenders are not long enough if mounted from the back. In those cases it needs to mount on the front side.

As you say, the instructions are purposely very loosely worded because there are so many possible setups. Any set of fenders is really a collection of parts that you end up custom fitting to get a neat looking job anyway.

On that note, you can always use a Daruma to mount the fender. Remove the L bracket entirely, slide the eye bolt onto the brake bolt, and mount the fender directly into the eye bolt. It looks pretty clean if you do it right.

How do you remove the recessed brake nut to install the Sheldon fender nut?

Does anyone have close-up pictures of either the Sheldon fender nut or the Daruma options set-up on a bike?

A screw in a plug in the bottom of the steerer tube and use the screw to mount the fender

Champagne for 9/8 steerers, regular wine corks for 1" headset bikes

Daruma is a fancy bike word for doing that, the plug made so inside condensation
in steerer tube will leak thru. you can buy those..
just an eye-bolt , nuts, and some rubber & metal washers

but you can make a hole in addition to the bolt hole in a cork to do that, too..
old ball point pen tubes , perhaps?

Remove the brakes and put the fender tab under the brakes on the front of the fork, then re-install the original recessed nut. You may hve to bend or cut the fender tab to fit without interfering witht he headset.

edit:

Brakes can be removed with a 5 or 6mm allen key in the nut on the back of the fork.

I went ahead and purchased the Sheldon fender nut. Will post back here if I have any trouble installing.

If you look at the end of the existing recessed nut you'll see that it has a 5mm hex opening. So you just use a regular allen key.

No pictures of the Daruma option but it's pretty simple. The big end with the cross hole is where the brake bolt passes through to retain the threaded end with the nut. The washer and rubber is just to aid in centering the whole shebang while avoiding any rattles. And obviously it needs a hole drilled into the fender. And fenders that use this method seem to all have an odd part raised and part recessed spot to allow them to align correctly. At least the two such setups I've worked on did it this way.