Longer mudguard stays...

[drsquirrel]

They look like an idea.

But on the way home today my mudguard broke again, in the same place as my old one, by the brake bridge. This time I put a peice of rubber (inner tube) between the metal+plastic contact point as suggested by others but it still broke!

[Brucey]

I reckon you have two problems;

1) the mudguard is very strained, (almost kinked in fact) near the brake bridge, because the forward section of the mudguard is mounted too far forwards at the chainstay bridge and the natural curve of the mudguard is not retained. This will cause the mudguard to crack from the inside out, as it were. If you use a smaller rear sprocket and move the wheel and mudguard backwards with longer stays, clips etc it'll make it worse, guaranteed to break again and again. The cure is to use a spacer of some kind to move the mudguard backwards at the chainstay mount and this will reduce the strain it sees. It will also help if you always can use the shortest chain length for any given gear, if necessary by using a half-link.

2) the way the mudguards, eyes, and seatstay angle are has left a long length of mudguard unsupported between the brake bridge and the first set of stays. This will jiggle up and down and this will also help to break the mudguard at the seatstay bridge (again and again...). The cure here is to bring that set of stays nearer to vertical. You can do this by either remounting those stays on the mudguard, or shortening the whole mudguard at the front which will move both sets round to a better angle. If you do the latter and you ride in groups, you might want a rear mudflap for the benefit of others. A skinny one 'stortford style' would be fine.

hth

cheers

[Ayesha]

Wow...

I have SKS full guards. The bike flew through a blackberry bush and hit a fence last August. The rear guard got cracked at the mid stay rivet, but no terminal damage. Still using them.

Now I remember when I fitted them. I didn't like how much guard was overhanging the rear of the rear tyre, so I chopped six inches off the front end where it is fastened to the mudguard bridge between the chainstays. The Dawes frame has a threaded mount, so I simply drilled a new hole through the mudguard and used a hex head setscrew with a couple of plastic washers. This shortened the distance between the brake bridge fastening and the mid stay rivet.

It looked more 'engineering' sound, as I recall.

[531colin]

................the mudguard is very strained, (almost kinked in fact) near the brake bridge, because the forward section of the mudguard is mounted too far forwards at the chainstay bridge and the natural curve of the mudguard is not retained...........

You can generally "bend" plastics by warming them with something like an electric (hot air) paint stripper.....a thing like a supercharged hair dryer. I can't vouch for specific makes of mudguard, but it sounds like you should have enough broken bits to practice on.....keep moving the heat to make the plastic go a bit "bendy", too hot and its shapeless!
BTW, I would worry that the guards are too close in your picture with full mudguards....something really quite small could wedge and lock up a wheel. I was out recently when somebody picked up a stick in their R. wheel, the guard was dragged up under the brake bridge and locked up the wheel, resulting in a nasty "off".(This was on a Cheviot tourer, with proper big clearances....damned unlucky, but it makes you think...) So stay releases on the rear, as somebody suggested, may be a good idea!

[drsquirrel]

If they are close it also reduces the chance of items going up under the guard as well. My intentions were to run them close - with absolutly no touching ever and I managed that even with the larger tyre. Not that I have much choice to run them further away.

I think what I might need to do is try another brand - I really didn't want to try Crud raceblades but might have to due to clearance under the brake.

I could just run it as it is in pic 2, it really does stop wet feet, just not a back which I never had a huge issue with - I could get one of them skinny "MTB" style ones that mount to the seat post and put it on and off as I feel (looks ugly though).

I have seen guards that mount to the brake bridge only and still curve along the tyre.

examples
http://www.instructables.com/image/F49F ... dguard.jpg
http://bp2.blogger.com/_pyyoRgMnO9E/R8Q ... Bguard.jpg

This looks interesting


Quite a lot of options out there really, still would prefer full ones, mmm

I reckon you have two problems;

1) the mudguard is very strained, (almost kinked in fact) near the brake bridge, because the forward section of the mudguard is mounted too far forwards at the chainstay bridge and the natural curve of the mudguard is not retained. This will cause the mudguard to crack from the inside out, as it were. If you use a smaller rear sprocket and move the wheel and mudguard backwards with longer stays, clips etc it'll make it worse, guaranteed to break again and again. The cure is to use a spacer of some kind to move the mudguard backwards at the chainstay mount and this will reduce the strain it sees. It will also help if you always can use the shortest chain length for any given gear, if necessary by using a half-link.

#1 was resolved after these pics were taken using spacers to move it as close to the wheel as possible. My 2nd guard was always mounted with spacers.

I never ride this in groups, and we don't worry about mudguards :p