Tandem Tom

I am reinstalling these on my wife's touring bike and I need a bi of advice. Need to bend/reform one section to obtain abit more tire clearance. Has an heated these up to make them more pliable ?
Thank!

honcho

Heating them hot enough to make them easy to bend will probably discolor the stainless steel. I have cold set them using my hands and pliers in the past but I am hardly a stickler for beautiful work.

Oops, I assumed you wanted to bend the stays, not the fenders. I have used adjustments to the stays to maneuver the fenders away from the tire.

Tandem Tom

They are black not silver.

Andrew R Stewart 

Tom- If you have the chromeplastic laminate fenders you can warm them up with a heat gun and do some minor realigning/shaping. But these fenders have a lot of memory from the molding and the foil layer between the outside plastic ones will not like a lot of manipulation. I suggest doing all the reforming off the bike if possible. Andy

3alarmer 

...I have done this several times, most recently about a month ago right before the rain hit here. They are amenable to forming in this way, with a heat gun, but IME the point at which they are easily formable is followed very quickly by the point where they begin to lose shape all together. So what I do is wear a pair of thick leather gloves, heat the spot I need to reform with a heat gun, and increase the heat of the fender spot gradually, putting down the gun and trying to bend the thing with my gloved hands, while it's in place on the bicycle.

If you can, try to accomplish your objective without using heat, but rather by readjusting the stays. You can often raise up the front lip on the front fender by the simple expedient of shortening the stays that lead to the lower rear of the fender. Anyway, it does work to reform them with heat. Here's the one I did a month ago.



I needed more rise on the front lip than I could easily get using stay adjustments. It's a little bit deformed under the front brake, but I'm probably the only one who will notice. The fender stays on these are something I retrofitted, and that is probably why. If you are willing to drill some new holes, and remove some of the riveted fittings on these, they are very adaptable.

djb

TT, its been four days so perhaps you've already done the deed, but where on the bike/fenders do you need to reform just one section? I've had SKS fenders on the present touring bike for about 5 years (silver 26") and some black SKS on my 30 year old touring bike (which are still being used on my wifes commuter bike, rather impressive life)
So far though, I've only made adjustments with the stays.
I assume the area in question is so tight that you can't move things like the metal mounts or fudge the metal stays enough?
On the 26" ones, the black plastic things that hold the stays in place have a closed off top, so to move the fender closer to wheel, I'd have to recut the stays, which is another reason I erred on the "higher than perfect" tire/fender clearance, as you can't make the stays longer having cutting them---is this your problem?

Andrew R Stewart 

Not to place words in Tom's (the OP) mouth I'll try to answer djb.

The number one reason that I have tried to reform fenders are when they have a twist that the few mounting points don't correct for well enough to make my eye's agree. The inability to have the majority of the fender centered WRT the tire as well as the ends too can be a challenge if the fender was packed poorly during the travel from factory to my hands they can attain a twist.

Number two is that when a tire is used that the fender wasn't ideally shaped for keeping a nice fender clearance above the tire one has to alter the fender's curve. Metal fenders allow this by spreading or lessening the width of the fender (and thus it's curve radius). Plastic fenders have no memory like metal does so heating the fender to a "soft" level helps reset the shape memory. Andy

djb

its really good to hear that some reforming can be done using a heat gun carefully, will keep it in mind for future.
Thanks