The Dreaded Toe Clip Overlap
 

Has anyone resorted to trimming or shortening a front fender to eliminate toe clip overlap? It sounds counter productive but no fenders seems worse than short ones. Any personal experiences?

Is the 3/4" between the fender and the tire the actual amount that overlaps, or would your toe clip be hitting the tire, anyway?

Just that I've thought about it, but decided not to go in that direction. Toe overlap is just something I've gotten used to. It really isn't much of a problem unless I'm making a really tight turn (like making a U-turn on a narrow single lane street). And, in those cases, I'm going pretty slow, bumping the fender with my foot isn't going to topple me. From my perspective a full-fender is worth paying more attention when doing tight turns.

I'd abandon toe clips for SPDs before cutting my Honjos. If fact, that's what I did. Probably didn't give me much more clearance, but the toe clip is no longer gouging my front fender.

+1 on keeping the fenders. Some overlap is probably unavoidable, but you may be able to reduce it with changes to the pedals. As long as you don't feel your toe clips are already too small, you could try smaller toe clips. Smaller toe clips have less forward extension and that will help.

This. I've had toe overlap on many bikes and never knew it was 'An Issue' until someone on this forum said it was. There's some relevance in the Colonel's remark, though. Toe clips might scratch your fender.

Toe clip overlap, the litigator's friend.

Way back I had one bike with it, I think one adapts to it pretty fast. Only one race where I had to plan for it a bit as the course included a low speed hairpin turn, a few practice approaches and no problem.
The bike's other attributes made it worthwhile to put up with.

I don't see how changing the pedal or removing toe clips helps at all. Your foot is still going to be in the same place, right?

I agree that overlap is not a problem. When I bang my foot on my fender or wheel, I change course or pedal backwards. It only happens at low speed, so it's no emergency.

I gained a small amount of additional clearance switching from deep toe clips to SPD, but it's not going to solve the issue, no.

Shorter crank arms will also help.

Sounds like a good reason to get another bike.

Or grow shorter feet.

This forum keeps surprising me with unexpected knowledge. I never know what image will stick in my brain when I go to bed at night.

That's too weird, even for me.

With my Look Delta style pedals it's very minimal. But with standard pedals and toe clips it makes contact without fenders. Not much but some.

Well, clearly you haven't had toe overlap issues bad enough to require this.

On the contrary, I have enormous feet for someone my height. I've even had people notice it just looking at me and my shoes.

Actually, when I look at all the big body parts I have, I could see them as all normal and claim that my femurs are just too short.

I had a pure bred German Shepherd once, whose leg bones never grew long. Named him Stubs. What do you think NG? Up for a new nickname?

Or simply pay attention to that issue while riding.
Some of my bikes simply have geometry that allows the overlap, fender or not.
My only toe clip problem is one side dragging if I'm careless clipping in.

​You want a toe? I can get you a toe. There are ways Dude. You don't want to know.

But seriously, the first time I saw a thread about overlap, I went out to the garage and checked my main road bike. Sure enough, the bike I'd been riding for two years has overlap, and I'd never noticed. So it's hard to convince me it is a real problem.

Pay attention to what? Growing shorter feet? I'm usually too preoccupied for that. But then, I don't have toe-clip-overlap problems, now do I? :D

I wouldn't cut off the lower portion of the front fender -- that's one of the most-important parts!