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.