Fenders. Ugh.
I repaired the mlcm’s front rack today, and, as part of the process of putting everything back together (the new mounting arrangement for the rack puts it higher than it used to be) I attempted to change the fork crown mount for the fender from a L-bracket to a brake-bolt daruma.
Argh.
The darumas I had (a couple of Velo Orange ones, or a Velo Orange one and a Rene Herse one) have a wonderfully non-optimal interaction with the fork on my Soma Speedster. A standard-length daruma fouls the tire, but if I shorten the daruma so it won’t foul the tire the fender ends up fouling the tire. And after an exciting couple of hours tweaking away at the fender, I eventually had to just give up and leave the front fender off the bicycle.
Gosh, I can’t see any situations in Oregon where this might not be a good idea.
Argh again.
I guess I could alway dump the 45mm fenders (maybe put them under Russell’s new bike?) and put the narrower plastic fenders back on instead. Or maybe it would be worthwhile to just use the super-low-trail fork I’ve got instead of the stock Soma fork, or get a Surly Cross-Check fork and rake it a little bit more so it doesn’t stand 1cm higher than the Soma fork does.
But in the short term, I’ll be riding a few brevets and permanents with a mlcm-mullet (fender in back, no fender in front) unless I decide to put fast tires on the project bike and use it instead.
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After complete and total failure with the Berthoud fenders for the Experiment (misdrilled the rear one, front one’s durema bolt adapter works fine but this inescapably crushes the dynamo wire emerging from the fork), I went with the LBS' standard full coverage fender –
http://www.axiomgear.com/products/gear/fenders/full-coverage-fenders/rainrunner-dlx-reflex/
and those are working out quite well with the Experiment. Some toe splash when traversing puddles, but pretty good when it’s just rain.