Fender Season

The weather people are telling us March will be wet. Besides the snow which has to melt, and the frost which has to come out yet, this has the makings of a perfect time for fenders. 

So, I preemptively mounted some Planet Bike Cascadia ALX fenders I bought several years ago. (Note: Link takes you to currently available Cascadia ALX model) 

The Singular Peregrine Mk4 seemed to be a great candidate for mounting those fenders to, and so this is what I did. There was one part though which proved to be a tiny bit of a challenge. This was in relation to the rear fender mount at the "brake bridge", as we used to call that part of the frame. It is odd we call it this because it no longer supports a brake these days. Maybe we should call this the "upper seat stay bridge" Or perhaps just "seat stay bridge" because there is no "lower" one. Anyway.....

That downward facing mounting boss....

At the top of the Planet Bike fender is a mount which is supposed to attach to a point where a caliper brake would mount on a rim braked road bike. Mountain bikes, while not supporting a brake off this bracing member between the seat stays, also generally had a hole going more or less horizontally through the tube. 

But not the Peregrine. Nope! That boss is pointed straight down at the ground. Yes....fancy fenders do mount on a boss like this. I understand. However; not all folks buy those kinds of fenders, and well......I have fenders which mount in a completely different way at this point. 

The Planet Bike fender has a metal mounting tab sticking up vertically from the fender which is supposed to mount to a seat stay bridge with the more common horizontal mount. I decided to modify the fender mounting tab as shown. Now I had to find a hex wrench with a short extension to fit in between the top of the fender and the mounting tab, now bent at a 90° to accommodate the bottom-facing boss. .  

Since a suitable wrench did not exist, I had to modify a 3mm hex wrench to be short enough to have its "elbow" end fit between the fender and the bolt I was using to attach the fender to the mounting boss. Just getting the bolt started was a minor miracle, by the way. The easy part was tightening it.  

Easy, maybe.... But also tedious, slow, and awkward. Once this hurdle had been cleared the rest was a can-o-corn.  I even found a small stash of long spacers and corresponding bolts to help clear the front brake caliper. It pays to squirrel away parts sometimes! 

The test ride wasn't maybe the best idea. We still had a lot of compacted snow and slush around the neighborhood. This cut my ride short, but not before I knew everything was tight and was working correctly. Even the slush was good for checking how sturdy the installation was due to the frozen stuff clogging up around the tire and fender at times. I'm confident this set up will do what I need to to do. 

And hopefully that will be riding a lot more soon!