How well will rear racks with solid platforms function as a fender for rainy day rides?
Thank you.

Mine works, but only barely enough to prevent the skunk stripe. You will still get grime allllllll over your drive train, and your feet will still be soaked. To me, fenders need to do more than protect my back. The front fender has always made the most difference in comfort to me.

How about if I have a front fender and a rear rack with a solid platform?

Why can you not mount both rear and front fenders?

Mine's not quite long enough to be an effective fender so I bolted on a rectangular piece of aluminum that extends about 7" aft of the end of the rack. Just beyond the vertical tangent of my rear wheel.

On my older bikes, my rear racks (various brands) were not enough to prevent me getting a little grimy. So, I added a fender to prevent that. The added benefit was that my front derailleurs didn't get packed with dirt.

On my newest bike (GF 2011 Trek Montare), however, I had to cut away bits on the Planet Bike Freddy Fender to get it to work w/the derailleur and Planet Bike Eco Rack. My clothes still stay clean, but my components, not so much. I probably could have spent more on a rack that would have had an adjustable height preventing that, but I couldn't find one that would hold my U lock in the slot w/o having to be locked in place.

Found a pic of my add-on. The rack ends where the top portion of my bags end. The material I used was from a trashed sign it's actually a plastic core with aluminum veneer on both sides.


DSCN2024 by Lester Of Puppets, on Flickr

While we are at this, can anyone recommend an idea how to put a full rear fender on mine?



' might be a hopeless case, but I'd ask anyway.

Front spray, coming back at you favors a long full mudguard,
I'd get a good pair of rain pants , for your Minimal mud guard concession.

With a cycling, rain cape ,, I need full mudguards , then I'm good to go..

Lack of eyelets prevents me from putting on full front fenders, so using an srs partial front fender that attaches at the fork. I could mount a full rear fender, but I'd have to buy a pair.

Couldn't you use p-clamps to create eyelets?

I never knew about p clamps, and my LBS didn't offer that advice. Thank you.

see if you can put a water bottle mount on the seat tube near the derailleur. Minoura and Zefal are two companies that make them. This appears to be the ultimate guide in mounting water bottles when there are no mounts, lots of ideas there

Noobie question: If you're riding a dedicated bad weather bike on paved roads/MUP on rainy days when you'll be dressed in rain shell and rain pants and shoe covers, are fenders really needed at all?

I do the same thing as Lester on both a MTB frame and a CX frame. In both cases, the combo of rear fender and rack created a mess of metal at the back of the bike that rattled too much for my taste and looked awkward. In addition, the CX frame was missing the bridge between the chainstays, so I would have been a little short on places to mount a fender down there.

I will answer your question with a question. Do you like dirty water shooting up at you from your front tire and up your back from the rear? Do you like flooding your shoes on every turn?

Fenders will ensure that most of the water is coming down from above and not from all directions, thus increasing the effectiveness of the selected rain clothes.

Riv nuts re how you can add bosses to aluminum frames, to bolt stuff on.
as P clips are a way to add bolts to hold something onto a small diameter tube.

Will those work as fender mounts?

If it's a "dedicated bad weather bike" then it should have fenders, otherwise what makes it a bad weather bike? You don't need fenders, but the best argument against them is that you don't ride enough in bad weather to make them worthwhile. If you have a bike that's designated for bad weather then you will definitely want fenders unless you don't mind getting to work filthy and you either regularly clean your bike or expect to replacing parts regularly or riding an inefficient bike. A grimy drive train can literally be a drag, and a wet road will throw up grime on to you and the bike. Sure, relatively clean pavement will throw up less grime, but it will still have some. And unless you're very fortunate, even a commute on clean pavement will have problem spots. And full coverage rain gear may keep your cloths clean, but getting to work and having a silt-crusted rain suit to deal with is a pain, too.

That's not to say that you need fenders. They are made to deal with the exact situation that a bad weather bike would encounter, so it makes a lot of sense to have them, but if you have a compelling reason to go without, there's no reason why you can't.

Raingear will help keep you dry, and more importantly, warm.

Fenders will help keep you and your drivetrain dry, and more importantly, cleaner in rain, snow, mud or if it is just wet, and even helps in dry, dusty conditions if riding offroad.

When I lived in the desert, my rear fender was a copy of the entertainment weekly paper jammed into my Pletcher rack. It worked fine, but then again, we might go 15 months without rain.

Since moving to Arkansas, I quickly adopted some Planet Bike fenders.

For one of my winter bikes, I put some plastic house siding under and extending past the back of the rear rack. I put another 2-3" wide strip on the back of the seat tube, narrowing down by the front derailieur. It works good on the spray and does not clog up with slush and snow.

I just saw in another thread that Planet Bike makes a fender called SpeedEZ that can be fitted onto bikes without eyelets. It appears they attach at the forks and seat stays with rubber straps. Who knew? I'm going to ask our LBS to see if they think they'll work on my MTB.

I wish I had a pic of this, but in Coralville, IA, I spotted a Pugsley with a Rollof 14 hub sporting a chunk of driftwood jammed under the rack, acting as a fender. If you can rock it, anything goes.

IMHO, the best method of keeping relatively dry in wet conditions is a set of full fenders. The type that wrap around the tire and have mud flaps. A rack with a platform will protect some but not fully.