I just picked up a cheap BD MTB for my new snow beater/commuter...decided to use Speedez on it. I was going to go the MTB front fender and only a rear rack mount, but the Speedez seem to give me a better compromise in coverage versus clearance...and I can always pop them off if want to do some actual MTBing in the warm months.

Wrong, it is the front of your pant legs and face that shall be made of feces!



Can't have it all!

I grew up in the country, I learned to ride around those kinds of things

Bit of a hack-job there, no offense.

I've mounted three different sets of fenders (I keep breaking them in crashes) on my Sutra. All it takes is a little bending, no big deal, no splicing or stacks of nuts or other such nonsense. I've come to see it as kind of an art, getting the bends just right. Box-end wrench helps a lot.

I'll take some photos tomorrow, post 'em up.

That being said, it's too right it's a silly place to put a caliper. I mean a few bends is no big deal, but shouldn't really be required. All rectified now, as of the 2010 version.

Of course when you ride in the rain, you are going to get wet, even with fenders. But with full fenders, your feet and lower legs are not going to get the soaking they will get if you don't run any fenders. This could be the difference between arriving at work with water squishing out of your shoes vs. your shoes being mildly damp.

I ride a cross bike with full fenders (PB Cascadia's) and my toe will hit the fender if I turn sharply with the pedals parallel to the ground and my toe sticking straight out. But after riding the bike for a small period of time, I learned to automatically compensate when I turn sharply. Don't even have to think about it anymore and it's never a problem.

MHO, I would never ride through a winter around here (Seattle area) without full fenders.

I took some pics of my bike today where my fenders mount, the installation isn't final as I just got some better hardware, but I haven't had the time to install it.

Almost all fender installs are a hack job of one kind or another, and bends are hacks. I didn't want to bend the stays because I don't like the way that looks. And as I said in my post, the stay was not long enough to reach the fender with the braze-on placement on the Sutra, hence the splice. No amount of bending with that stay was going to make it reach the fender and keep it from rubbing the tire.

I used to think that my rear rack and panniers would keep spray off my back. I was wrong. Now I use a fender and no longer get that spray.

Of course you'll get wet from rain, but it doesn't mean you have to have a dirty stripe down your back.

Here are some photos of my setup, described earlier:


huge version


huge version

Water from the sky is pretty darn clean, all the water from the road is far from clean. Road grime, oil, anti-freeze, fuel, urine, truckers chew spit, smoke butts, etc, are all the things I'd like to keep off my merino wool, gore-tex, eyes and mouth. It's also plain fun to ride through big puddles of water well after the rain is gone, in plain cloth, legs lifted like a 5yr old kid and not get wet.

Fenders are useless.

Nobody cares about your hoity-toity clothes or girlish face - fenders are to protect the bike.

So if a rear rack does most of the job, what about the rest? A rear rack with a deck will stop some water from being kicked up by the rear tire but not all. You'll still get a ckicken strip of dirty water up you back. In my experience, a full coverage fender set with an attached mud flap will prevent the chicken strip and muck getting on the down tube or up into your chest and face. Yeah, you'll still get wet from above when it rains, but when it stops you and the bike won't.

Clip on fenders offer poor tire coverage and protection from the wet. If I ride in waterproof pants or jackets, l just get overheated and wet from the inside due to sweat.

That's much of the reason why I have fenders on my commuter and still want those Crud fenders for my roadie.

Agreed.

But its my money maker!!

Oh, there's just something about that that's sooooo wrong