PoeCo

Last May, my husband and I purchased our first custom tandem. At the time, it seemed ridiculous to put fender mounts on the frame because it rarely rains where we live and we weren't concerned about having the ability to put fenders on (plus, at the time we had another tandem that had mounts and figured we'd ride that one if it was raining, but that tandem has since been sold), but, as things seem to go, it has of course been a particularly wet year this past one and neither of us are particularly enjoying getting mud, dirt, water sprayed on us during wet rides (Note to self: Always say "yes" when asked if fender mounts are desired).

My question is in regard to wondering if there are good options for fenders when one doesn't have fender mounts on a tandem that won't be too odd or fall off regularly? Does anyone have any experience with this? We do have mounts for racks (front and rear), but I don't think that will be beneficial in this particular situation. We would be most grateful for any helpful suggestions!

Thanks in advance!!

scycheng

If there are rack mounts, you should be able to use the same mounting bolt. Just mount the fenders stays to the outside of the rack stays. This reduces the lateral stress on the bolts. If you have a brake bridge (but without any holes), I would drill the fender and run a cable tie through the fender and around the brake bridge. The other end of the fender usually clips onto the bottom bridge piece.

For the front, many forks have a hole for brake mount in the crown. I would use that hole if at all possible. Don't attempt to drill a hole in the fork crown if there isn't one as that may weaken the fork.

lichtgrau

To start with, I’m a little bit a fan of fenders. No, not that I think that they are especially nice and stylish but to me they were never so ugly that I was willing to sacrifice their benefit ;-)

Actually, I never got the concept that bikes without fenders could have a special coolness. For me they were rather lacking an important feature – protecting me and (even more important) parts of the drive train from the typical spray of sand/dirt/water.

Therefore, except on my “pure” nice weather race bike I was always looking to find a way for a good fender mounting option. When there were no mounts on the frame or on the fork, I usually use some matching clamps or brackets that can be assembled on various stays (like seat stays) to hold the fixing elements of a fender.

Building up our tandem, however, I had no problems with the rear fender (the frame was prepared accordingly) but on the front I had no standard option (suspension fork, not prepared for fenders). The solution that was found here works very good so far (3500 km).

To give you a hint / an idea what could be done in your situation it would be helpful to see some pics of the front / rear of your bike. Mounts for racks could give some options…

lichtgrau

...sorry, didn't see scycheng's tips. Very valuable...

Artmo 

Take a look at SKS snap-fenders on Amazon or at your LBS. No bolts required. Or, Google bicycle fenders.

dsmyers

Portland design works makes great fenders and has attachment hardware to fit over a skewer.

PoeCo

Thank you all for the suggestions -- truly appreciated! We've kind of figured we'll have to do some fiddling to get anything to work, so these are some great suggestions to try out. Many thanks!!!

DKMcK 

I use these on my Santana.
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=...9aACCEk&adurl=

I clip them on when I'm expecting bad weather. The are recommended for 25mm tires or less but I use them with 28mm.

Chris_W

You can't beat Portland Design Works fenders and they have some of the best hardware available for mounting them without braze-ons.

Alan_F

Our last two road tandems have used Wound-Up X2 forks without any fender mounting points, but the rear of the bikes had threaded mounting points at the rear bottom bracket, seatstay bridge, and rack braze-ons. We used two different brands of fenders on them and had pretty good results with both.

We're currently using these: https://www.axiomgear.com/products/f...r-360-fr-trekk. I bought them partially because I needed one set of the mounting brackets for the front fender on my road bike which had fender mounts that snapped off in use (2015 Specialized Roubaix SL4 - really poorly designed fender mounts). Before that we used these: https://www.planetbike.com/store/spe...d-touring.html

The Axiom fenders are made out of a really nice plastic that can be bend really far without cracking or breaking, and they have a reflective stripe on both fenders. The provided mounting adapters (called Frame Runners) can be attached with zip-ties or provided o-rings. The fender stays can be attached to the Frame Runners or standard rack/fender braze-ons. In our case the front fender is using the Frame Runners and the rear is using the rack braze-ons. The front fender also has a bracket that attaches at the fork crown. Since we have no mounting point there I use zip ties to attach that bracket at the fork crown.

The Planet Bike fenders have the advantage of not needing to attach at the fork crown, and probably as a result they move around a little more and the front fender is a bit shorter than the Axiom. The rear fender doesn't use the rack braze-ons, attaching like the front with stretchy bands at the seatstays. The rear fender also attaches at the bottom bracket and seatstay bridge, but I think you can use zip-ties for those two points if your don't have mounting points there. On my DaVinci the seatstay bridge bolt goes upwards into the bridge but the fender's bracket is designed for a bolt that runs horizontally. Rather than using zip ties I drilled a small hole through the fender at the right spot and bolted the fender to the vertical mounting hole.

Both sets of fenders worked over tires measuring 32mm (marked as 28mm). The Planet Bike front fender goes on and off in seconds. Because I am using zip ties at the fork crown the Axiom would take a little longer and 2 spare zip ties to take off and put back on. Either rear fender is a little slower to take off and put on because they're attached at 3 points.

lichtgrau

...just took some photos of my front fender mounting. It took a while until I found this solution and after 4000km I can say: It works really well.
Originally it’s a bottle cage fastening and its standard use is to mount bottle cages at odd positions.
Since it’s designed for tubes with larger diameters, it fits perfectly around the guide tube of the suspension fork.
It has a nut/thread at the right position to fasten the fender mount…