Offenders

So, I had some people ask for more detail on the hack job I did to get the fenders on our cyclocross race bikes that were not intended to have and seem downright offended by the though of fenders. I guess that in this case we should call them offenders.

As I mentioned earlier, the Ridley X-Fire's have a total of zero mounts. Heck, my older one didn't even used to have water bottle bosses until I bought the necessary tool and added them myself this fall. After all, what would a thoroughbred race bike want with bosses and junk? I'll tell you what I want, and that is to not have yet another f-ing specialty bike in my basement that collects dust much of the year. With that and with the help of a bunch of zip ties I managed to get them on both Cathy's and later onto my bikes.



After a ton of searching and pondering and basic tinkering I discovered that the mounting bracket insert from the inside of an SPD shoe, for a set of SPD cleats will fit perfectly in the rear dropout cutout of the X-Fire. You can affix it to the outside of the dropout with one threaded hole protruding into the dropout cutout and the other threaded hole sitting on top of the dropout. The space between the holes matches the upper/back dropout width. You can then affix the cleat plate using a single recess head bolt, like one from an SPD cleat, by screwing it in from the inside of the dropout cutaway. This gives a perfect, fixed mounting point for the fender brackets. Unfortunately, the front fork affords no such option.



For this I used 1" ID rubber coated metal conduit clamps that I had to modify to fit right (needed like 3/4" but they didn't have them so I had to cut them off and drill a new hole), and bolts to mount the brackets. This was how I'd done them on Cathy's Specialized Tricross in the past as well. For a road bike, all bets are off without highly modifying the set of fenders. I'm thinking about buying some new fenders and giving that a try though.



I also determined on the ride Saturday that I would much rather ride solo than to do a group ride with people who do not have adequate rear fender coverage. Sure, it doesn't take much to keep your ass dry but following behind someone whose fender is too short means that you are taking a shower. Those raceblade clip on thingies suck x2;

1. they inevitably get bumped or move and rub so everyone has top stop and wait for the owner to futz around with them
2. they don't do squat in terms of reducing the rooster-tail spray behind them

Never again. The rear fender should wrap well around and come within inches of the road. Better yet, you could add a flexible "mudflap" that actually skims the road. A chunk of old innertube works great for this. I still need to add those to my bike but did have them last year.