Safety Beware the fenders!!!

Status
Not open for further replies.
Wow! I too hope your son-in-law recovers fully very soon. Thanks for posting this.

I too am building a Cranbrook Cruiser and after seeing similar warning here, and elsewhere, I have removed the fenders. Yes, mine has the double tabs front and back on the front fender but, I can change my shirt and dry off much easier than I can survive any type of front end failure.

Thanks to all for getting the word out.

Bill
 
I have had two accidents, with two separete bikes, with each one beining different one front and one back. the front fender crash recked the bike: the bike cartwheeled and totalled the rear fender, Bent the front forks, and the front fender stays, and broken L bracket> the second one scratched the paint on the fenders when it was run over by the rear tire and bent the rear frender stays as well as brakeing the brake arm as well. they were both purchased on the bikes.
 
It is not too hard to reinforce fenders, especially the plastic ones. I lengthened and reinforced my front fender in order to install my vintage license plate. I drilled out the stock rivets and installed bolts in their place [further back in order to lengthen the fender]. The rack mounts bolted into the V brakes make the most difference in stability.

I also added some metal underneath the fender to strengthen the main mount and bump up the number of mounting bolts to 3.

dscf1066.jpg
 

Attachments

  • fenderpost43.jpg
    fenderpost43.jpg
    124.1 KB · Views: 464
Last edited by a moderator:
i built my bike about 3 months ago and just put the fenders on 1 week ago.
went out and checked mine after reading this and both the front and rear fender tabs were broken. i am running with no fenders now!!!
 
Yes and No on fenders

I have a very old pair of planet Bike fenders and they also split in two, but it was my fault I had to cut notches out of them so my V-brakes would fit. So after a year they spit right were I cut them.

So being cheep I found some brass plate and cut them into strips drilled 1/16 holes and put them back together with pop rivets. Since then No problems.

Do you think the vibration from the motor is doing this?:geek:

Mike Frye A.K.A. Frye Bikes
 
I have seen too many end over end crashes from a front fender on a motorized bicycle to ever use one.
I have a collection.
Its one of those look I saved my life things.
 
ICE bikes and Mtn bikes and death and bad parts

This is a great thread. Do we carry it on any farther?

I have some experience, but have never had a fender-bender-body busting accident.

Questions I'd ask of =some= of the guys here who say "fenders! BaD!"

=what brand of fenders?
=cheap chinese steel fenders?
=make-do mountings (cold bending bent brackets while riding cant be safe

=they tend to get out of alignment and then rub. So we push 'em and...
eventually a little bracket tab or some such part cracks, but does not "let go" until we ride.

=Agreed: fenders on a mtn bike are asking for a stick to JAM the works.

=Agreed: fenders well fitted to a road bike, double and triple checked,
perhaps Planet Bike fenders (cheap and easy to CUSTOM FIT WELL),
can be safe and good for =clean asphalt roads. If this were not true,
the PB people would not sell the product.
IF fatigue of polycarbonate fenders is a potential crop-up,
and they =could= break because we've, say narrowed them to fit through a fork crown,
then after a season's use, or whatever, replace them before the "crack!

In stock form I do not think that PB fenders can ever fatigue crack, any more than, say
a vinyl shower curtain. They are both, inherently flexible, eternally stable, thermosetting plastics of different chemistry.
Both are decades' old-plastic technology.


=ICE powered bikes vibrate.
Vibration has a way of loosening or cracking just about anything that is not lock-tighted, super-immobilized, or, even, "too solid", or the bad vibes of the venerable one-stroke, crack-hairline crack, thin, stamped, stay-ends.
This is my experience from tens of thousands of driving of Model T,
which is, itself, little more than a glorified, four wheeled ICE powered bike.
It vibrates! Have been a cross-country Model T keep-the-speedster-running, volunteer mechanic.

Oh, how I know how four and one lungers tend to rattle and shake incessantly,
all parts of the vehicle. The strangest things tend to come loose in time.
Model T sports something like two hundred cottered, castle nuts, as a necessity of its era.

=Just as with a small airplane, every biker should do a pre-flight inspection,
right? Five minutes to inspect all the fender attachments to be sure they are sure, and there is PLENTY of tire-fender clearance, and no cracks anywhere.

Then, if all that is done, it may be said to be FUN AND SAFE to splash through the puddles.

I don't much favor the usual OEM steel fenders found on many new Chinese cruiser bikes...bad experiences with one such bike led me to replace its full-wrap steel fenders, with super-light, standard "Freddy Fenders" of Planet Bike.

Installation required (and always requires, imo) not "zip ties" and other make-do stuff, but actual cutting and fitting of certain areas, say, where the rear fender mounts at the BB area. Clips and such? Don't like them.

Stays? For the Planet Bike fenders, the stay system seems adequate and strong...yet...EVENTUALLY, a fork-end eyelet may crack from sideways vibes, and potentially drop the front fender, for instance, into the rotating wheel.
Yet, even if that happens, no dire accident should happen...but it might!

Header City. How many of us have been there? I know that I've visited the place at least once. I don't want to go there again. Neither do any of you.

I make long, seemingly rambling posts.
Permit me my sins? I want to share my ten cents, is all.
Skip these posts if they annoy.

What we gain is =various perspectives=.

More to come. Must think. Meanwhile, carry on: CRASH the dreadful,
commonly-seen TERRRIBLE OEM cheapo-fender so often found.
I mean, trash it if it frightens you. Me? I use the PB fenders on three bikes now and have no trouble yet. But I'm not ICE powered. And I have no heavy miles. But I do have some heavy riding experience.

Choose your poison. I prefer to keep my newest bike clean,
and I go out of my way to look for puddles. Splashing them aside,
instead onto my backside, is fun!

CRASHING and killing the bike or yourself, of course, is another sport.
I know of no fans of that...sort.
 
Last edited:
Would it be OK if....

If I make a casual, walk-around video, showing my new PB "Freddy Fender" installation to a mere, Trek Lime?

That's a foot-powered bike. The fender installation is clean and safe.
I have not totally finished the installation; a few details remain.

A foot-powered bike is not an ICE powered vibration-prone fender-breaker-loosener.

But, there are ways...quite surely, and times, quite surely, that you can make good fenders safe, for the conditions you ride: IF those conditions don't include off-road driving, where sticks and stones may be picked up by knobby-tread tires, and carried round into the fender-tire clearance,
JAMMING the works.

I run Bontrager slicks, only, and I am a paved-road rider, only, really.
I ride in the rain and corner acutely. Slicks do not slip in the wet.
Tread is useless except for snow, mud and off-road use.
On streets? Treaded tires of the knobby variety waste power and
offer much less traction
. Sheldon and Jobst said so. I find that they do not lie,
though I, who has NO credentials, may differ from their opinions at times;
as, too, they differ in their own, educated opinions, at times.

Video, maybe, later today? I know that many of you cannot see video.
So I will word-out my thoughts in print, as well as narrate the video to come.

I feel pretty well today...better than the other day when I made this ho-hum
ride to the store. You can see how frail and out of shape I am (huff huff),
because I am confined to bed most hours of most days. I have no aerobic capacity, not for now, not until I get my "bike legs" back.

The ebike will be back on the road in a month or less, I hope.
It took a header. The header was not the fault of its PB fenders.
That header was MY fault: running head-on into a six inch concrete curbing
at twenty miles per hour. The fenders survived just fine. So did I.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top