Sunday, December 04, 2011

What do you do on a snowy Saturday....

....with no rides on the agenda? Install fenders on the commuter bike of course.






Some "minor" modifications were needed as these fenders, while listed a disc brake compatible, should really read (Disc Brake Compatible if you have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and several years of mock up and design under your belt... a full on manufacturing facility is highly recommended too).

As you can see in picture #1, the support struts required a good amount of massaging to get to work with the disc brake caliper. I suppose I could do what everyone told me was "easiest", and add a ton of spacers, but frankly I don't care for the look of that. Just looks wrong. While I won't call my butchery...er..."modification" elegant, it gets the job done. These fenders are also not out of the box compatible with suspension corrected forks as you can see in the last picture. I had to improvise a new bracket which would have meant using a dremel tool to remove the old bracket, and fabricating a new bracket. My dremel is in TX, and I don't have any errant bracketry up here in CO... not to mention a bench vise to simplify the modification process. Instead I used an old Mavic hub adjusting tool I had laying around in the bottom of the tool box, cut off the wrench end, and hand bored two mounting holes to extend the existing brackets reach.

Overall I think they turned out pretty well. I'm not super happy with the gap on the rear fender, I'll have to ponder a fix on that. Considering the lack of a proper or even half ass shop, they will do. The ultimate test will be Monday morning to see if they keep the slush and road grime off my bum.

3 comments:

Kevin aka. PBR said...

That looks like a trusty commuter!!

Hang in there on being apart from your family.

Get that Beerd growing! ;)

fatbob29r said...

Kevin,

Must get out and ride with you guys, been so busy with work and such that I've become less than friendly. Want to get out and do a snow ride with you guys.... soon, soon

Aaron d said...

lol bob. I was looking at the pic of the upper front fender mount and was like, is that part of a mavic hub tool?

Aaron