Speedo

I'm a real fender fan. I like how the keep a lot of road crud off the bike when it rains.

I was riding home from work this evening on an unpaved multi-use path when there was a loud bang, the front wheel came to a sudden stop, and the bike did an endo. I went up and over the handlebars and came down with a convincing thud. Fortunately since the path was unpaved a lot of energy that would have gone into a good fling went into gouging a three foot trench in the gravel.

I lay on the ground for a few moments to assess the damage. "Okay what hurts?" A little ache in the shoulder, not too bad. Where my thigh was still tangled up with the bike, oh yes that will be a nice bruise.

What happened? When I extricated myself from the bike I was surprised to see that my front fender was shattered. After post-mortem of the pieces I think I know what happened. I think a stick got kicked up and became trapped between the tire and the lower edge of the fender. That started the process of tearing out the points where the stays are attached to the plastic. The stays, with some of the fender plastic attached were wrapped up to the fork where they jammed up the front tire, bringing it to a complete stop.

These are older fenders. I think newer ones have breakaway points on the stays, and I can see why now!

Speedo

Nigeyy

C'mon Speedo, you were just trying to do a front wheelie weren't you? Jeez, I really don't want to cycle with you, you seem to have a track record of accidents

Another not so obvious downside: if you have a bike with fenders and need to put your bike in the back of a car, even if you take your front wheel off, usually that fender is in the way.

Cyclesafe

On tour I had a branch get caught up in the front fender too. However, the fender stays were pulled out of the rubber/plastic thingamabobs and I didn't endo. Those thingamabobs have an important function.

bwgride

I've experienced the "back of a car" problem with fenders. Fenders were also a hassle when packing for a plane trip. I decided to go without and have not re-installed my fenders since. Eventually I decided fenders were more hassle than worth.

kayakdiver

Sounds exciting Speedo! I see lots of good that came out of it.. you didn't bust your head.. didn't break a bone and managed to find humor in it all...

Glad you're OK.

chandearriba

Not so long ago, I had a similar experience. With one of my feet (really XL, btw), I accidentally pushed the front fender against the wheel. The knobby tire pattern grabbed the fender's bottom tip and made it fold inwards following the wheel rotation, and obviously the bike, with me on top, came to a sudden disastrous halt. Clumsy bigfoots of the world, beware!

I more or less survived the fall and fixed the fender mess; the thing was terribly disfigured, but, surprisingly enough, it wasn't broken. Anyway, I would never mix fenders (SKS P50) with knobby tires (Panaracer Firecross 700x45) again.

antokelly

SKS fenders have a safety device attached to there fenders if anything did get caught up the stayes come loose .
hope i never have to put them to the test.

MichaelW

Ive put my fender safety release to the test and it works. I would never use a chromoplastic-style tough plastic fender without a safety release system.

TurbineBlade

Yeah, most of the newer style fenders have those safety clips. I didn't think about issues getting the bike into a trunk...but that's a good point.

I still love my fenders though

aggiegrads

We won't bite if you call them mudguards.

Speedo

I love my fenders too. Having had 24 hours to think it over I've decided to get a replacement set. WITH the safety thingamajigs! The ones I had mounted are 23 year old SKS fend, uh, I mean mudguards.

Speedo

Speedo

No kidding! Three significant crashes between March 6th 2009 and yesterday. When I walked in the house I told my wife that I've had my three crashes and I'm inoculated for life!

Speedo

Speedo

Thanks. Actually there is a kind of peaceful, enjoyable, moment between the time when you do the assessment and realize that there are no significant injuries, and starting to extricate yourself from the bike.

jdom

An enjoyable moment?Only someone that has had 3 significant crashes in the past year could say that.
Then again I guess that it is a joy to realize that you are not hurt at least.

Shimagnolo

I was once riding my non-suspension mtn bike when I ran over a pop can and almost did an endo.
The pop can was oriented with it's axis parallel to my front axle.
As the middle of the can was crushed by the tire, the ends bent inward and clamped it onto the tire so firmly that as the tire rotated, the can destroyed the fender, and when it reached the fork, it stopped the tire.

Shimagnolo

I never leave home without my thingamabob.

zebede

Is the SKS do-hickie comptaible with other mfg fenders like Plandet Bike?

hopperja

I had a similar thing happen to me. I hit the fender with my foot and pushed it into the tire. The tread caught ahold of the fender. The fender folded in half, through the fork out to the other side. It didn't stop my wheel and it didn't make me crash.

The fender stay was attached to the fender with one rivet on either side of the fender. One of the rivets gave way. I re-attached the one side of the fender to the fender stay using a small screw and straightened out the fender stays. Now, if you were to look at my bike, you wouldn't ever know anything like that had happened (unless you looked really close and saw the small screw).

In a nutshell, that's why I'm a big fan of Planet Bike Freddy fenders.

Speedo

It's not something you add on, it's built into the fender. If you look at the fenders in this ad you'll see that the front fenders have a black plastic piece at the point where the two stays come together where it attaches at the fork blade. The old style is just a wire loop, like you see on the rear fender. If this front fender were to get jammed up, the black plastic piece allows it to just break away so that it is less likely to bring the wheel to an abrupt stop. I don't know if the Planet Bike fenders have a breakaway piece like that, or some equivalent safety design.

Speedo

(edit) Wait! I'll be darned, you can buy them after market. There isn't a lot of information, but I would think that the wire loop goes into the plastic piece, and the plastic piece attaches to to fork blade. So these would work with Planet Bike fenders.(/edit)

njkayaker

The wire stay is basically an "old style" stay with a loop (eyelet) that can accept a screw. Just like the rear fender. That is, you can mount the stay without the plastic block directly to the fork fender eyelet. The way the "break away" mechanism works is that the stay loop pressure-fits into the plastic block.

If the Planet Bike stay loop isn't different in size, the SKS plastic blocks might work for the PB fenders too.

Pedaleur

There's also a surreal moment when you make eye contact with the dad who, like you, had just stopped with his young daughter to feed the ducks, and right when you are at the apex of your vault, you share a "What the...?"

Then you do what you wrote.