Another DIY Fender
 

A co-worker asked me, why not just buy some fenders? And he has a point, but where's the fun in that? And, perhaps, the DIY project can be better in some respects than something off the shelf. Plus, saving 20-30 dollars isn't a bad thing.

I'd posted some waste-basket blade fenders earlier, and while they do mount in seconds and were ok for light drizzle and puddles they just didn't cut it for the real slop. So I decided to try some full fenders. I think they turned out pretty well. Bear in mind that the philosophy is to take whatever is easily available - and cheap - and adapt it without special tools. Or skills.

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=359232http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=359233http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=359234
I used a six foot aluminum carpet trim strip from Home Depot, 1 3/8", about 8-10$. Other parts, a thin steel rod, two 8mm bolts with washers, a few inches of aquarium air hose, and zip ties.

Some hints in case anyone actually wants to make their own. Get it curved the way you want it first, and tied in, before working with the steel mounting rod. Bend one end in a circle and bolt that on, eyeball and bend the rod with pliers around the fender, and only lastly bend the other end around the other mounting bolt. Make one or both an oval to leave room for adjustment. The aquarium tubing is to slide on the bar, between the bar and fender so that it doesn't rattle.

Pretty inspired use of off-the-shelf stuff. They sure do look very nice but do they provide enough actual coverage in real-world riding?

Nice!! :thumb:
I thought I was the king of cheapos using corrugated cardboard and nicely print-patterned duct tape, but with how nice these look, you won!
I like how you got the arc with no kinking. Looks very $$ boutique :)

I haven't had a chance yet but I splashed through some puddles yesterday and no spray hit me then. I'm not sure yet if I'll need to add a piece in front. Probably.

Thanks! :beer:

On the bending I chanced onto a technique. You lay the strip on top of a tire, and with your thumbs bend it very slightly exactly where it parts ways from the rubber. When it's laying flat on the curve, rotate the tire and strip together and repeat.

impressed!

keep it up and/or offer to make them for people on here :)

Nice fender!

I like the light mounted on the fork blade. Do you prefer that location to the handlebars?

I'm not totally sure - I moved it down there to put a hand warmer box on the bars during the arctic outbreak last week. It's mounted with just the normal rubber ring, so I'm checking frequently to make sure it isn't wearing on the carbon fork but so far no problem. I'm leaning towards leaving it there. The bright spot spreads out better in front, and the longer shadows don't bother me.

Does the wheel make a big shadow on the right side??

A bit of a shadow, but the cone spreads out. Higher on the fork, the shadow is worse. You'd really have to try it out to decide if it was going to bother you. To me it's no worse than the shadow from the brifters.

Anyone can do it at least as well as I did, no need to buy it from someone! We also still have to see how it performs. Between the flooded creek and more rain expected tomorrow I should get a good test on these and I will post to this thread if I still get slopped.

I didn't think to mention it, but most fenders you see are curved down on the sides, around the tire, so you'd look at something flat like this and say how is that going to work? What about the sides? But the fact is, almost all of the water is slung off from the outer tire surface. As far as I know, the side curves are mainly cosmetic, like tread on a street tire just something people expect. We'll see. But I did have an earlier try with plastic the same size and flat like that, and it did work (but it was too ugly and lumpy).

I'm using a VO pass hunter front rack ( http://store.velo-orange.com/index.p...nter-rack.html)

http://store.velo-orange.com/media/c.../ra-0026_1.jpg

and the rack itself isn't that useful (or at least I never find anything to put on it), but I did a DIY version of this Paul light mount

http://www.ecovelo.info/images/paul-gino-1.jpg

and popped it into one of the threaded eyelets. I can reach the light while riding, and it doesn't clutter up the handlebars.

Update
 

It worked like a charm! Not a drop of mud splatter and I went through plenty of mud and puddles this morning. The drive train took some though - I guess a mud flap is in order.

The back tire is 26 mm by the way, so the 1 3/8" strip overhangs the tire by 4.5 mm on each side if I have it centered perfectly. I'm probably 1-2 mm off so the same size strip will likely be good for up to 700Cx28 if you're more precise.

Really! From the pics the fender looks way to narrow, that's great to hear it is actually effective!

I'm a big fan of DIY solutions, but at ~ $10 for the carpet strip, plus more for the other bits, that seems to me not sufficiently cheaper to justify trying that instead of actual fenders.

However, I can envision a comparable solution using unfolded wire clothes hangers for the struts (free), and perhaps plastic garden edging (cheaper) or I've heard that election yard signs are made of good stuff ("lexan"?) -- those are free at the right time of year, or maybe you could get a big pile of long, straight scraps from a print shop?

Yep I thought that $10 was pricey but I needed the 6' length. Problem is, 3 ft lengths of whatever is too short to reach all the way around to the seat tube. Lexan or any polycarbonate would work if it was a reasonably thin but you might have a tough time finding a free piece long enough. I just now checked tapplastics.com and you can order a cut to size piece of clear or colored for coincidentally $10. Alas plus oversize shipping but that would look pretty sharp.

Aluminum lawn edging, that sounds like worth looking into.

I think you'd have to do better than a coat-hanger wire though, especially with a flimsier fender material. I happened to have the steel rod left over from something else - three or four dollars. Still, I'll take it over $40-$50.

ps, the one challenge with using plastics is getting it to curve right without any sharp bends, lumps, sways etc. It's tricky. I've never been very proud of the result, bending by hand with a heat gun.

I was thinking of plastic, something like this. Per foot it is cheap, but maybe not available in just 3ft (split 5" strip in half for front/rear). But if you do a gardening project and buy that stuff by the 50ft roll, you may well have a good-size hunk left over.

wp, I like it. I'm surprised that you don't need the side curves. Interesting! I like it when common perceptions turn out to be wrong.

What did you use for rods? And mounting nuts and bolts?

A guy named mechanicalron used to hang out in the Mechanics section of bikeforums. I think he made some fenders. I'll see if I can dig up his thread. Maybe someone will beat me to it. His work was always gorgeous, and his approach was different in everything he did, so it's not really a comparable to yours.

OK, here is a thread showing a few things he made. He made two pairs of fenders out of wood and another out of old tires.

Just one of the steel rods that Home Depot sells. Maybe 3/16" * - I confess that I just picked the smallest one that felt stiff enough. I'll measure this evening. Nothing special about the bolts either, match up the eyelet bolts a half inch or so longer than the dropout width. The only bolts are on the back fender eyelets, and zip-tied above the brake and at the seat tube below the bottle cage. I know, that's Kludgy but it's quick and solid. I'm not getting any rattling, rubbing the tire, slipping out of place or anything like that.

Those wooden fenders are awesome.

* - 1/8" rod. Bolts are M5-.8 x 16mm

Coincidentally I was just thinking about that on my way home last night. It was a light rain, and I still haven't placed a fender section over the top of the front tire. I was watching the spray, and wondered why I'd never noticed it that clearly before. Duh, it's because I'd never had the light on the fork, underneath it. It's a fountain lit up from below and you can clearly see where all the water goes. Almost all of it is straight out from the outer circumference and there's a smaller amount at angles, but still coming off from the outer surface. It might vary with tire shape, and with knobbies or deep tread who knows, but anyone curious can see for themselves just by strapping a light down there and riding a rainy night!