Fender Installation Tips Omnibus

Over the years, Will has written a few newsletters with tips for fendering bikes. So when a customer recently email looking for some fendering insight, we decided to put all those old fender newsletters in one place. Theres a lot in here so use the table of contents below to jump down to older newsletters.

-Roman

First Annual Fender Tips-n-Tricks Newsletter

11/17/23

There's been rain in the forecast all week but so far it hasn't quite panned out. I was decked out in rain gear and ready to ride through another atmospheric river on Wednesday night on the way home and was disappointed when it turned out to be just a run-o-the-mill shower. It cleared up after an hour.

We all suspect the real deal stuff is imminent and that soon the streets, like last year, will be littered with pulverized flipped-out umbrellas, blown over pedestrians, and tree branches, so all this week the staff has been staying late getting their fenders installed and in at least half-working order.

It's a dry enough climate around here that most of us take our fenders off from May 'til November when we toss them back on at the last possible second. With Sheldon fender nuts and the struts already cut to length, it's a quick job, assuming the tire size hasn't changed too drastically.

Despite being tragically out of stock of fenders until late next week, here's our first annual Fender Tips-n-Tricks newsletter. No doubt many of you have your own tricks (send 'em!) but here's what I saw just taking a quick look at the employee bikes:

If you're using a front rack and the front end of your SKS fender is a little too jaunty, you can tamp it down with a drilled wine cork and a zip tie, like Roman did here. This is a 700c fender on a 650b bike, so it takes a little more work adjusting the radius for the smaller wheel. 

The newer style of SKS fenders we carry don't come with mudflaps, which makes for a fun opportunity to make your own. You can make them as hi-falutin or as low-brow as you like and they'll all work great. If your bike is a little too curated, muck it up a bit with a DIY milkjug plastic flap, or class up your beater with a fancy leather flap.

Mark cut up an old Riv bottle as his flap. That's about 20 bucks worth of Riv bottle if this eBay listing is a true market value.

If you'd rather be riding in the rain than preparing for it by carving up a unique mudflap, we also sell pre-made ones(we no longer sell the Sackville Mudflaps, but do carry wide and narrow SKS flaps):

Get at least one flap for the front fender. The rear is more for the person behind you. I was riding behind flapless friend Myles during the brief rain on Wednesday and got a nice dose of road water on my face before backing off. Luckily, I was nose-breathing.

Sergio, whose bike is pictured above, ventured outside the Riv-fold and is using Honjo fenders. Hey, as long as we don't have to install them, it's all fine, but consider one of these quick release thingies for the front fender. Sucking a stick up into a front fender without a quick release is a good way to go over the bars and possibly bend your fork at the same time.

If you've got track dropouts, use wingbolts instead of regular bolts so you can easily pop your fender off to remove the wheel if you get a flat. A Secu-clip works equally well, but isn't as reminiscent of those old-timey Huret axle wingnuts. We're out of wingbolts, but they're out there. Try McMaster Carr.

Antonio has black SKS fenders on his Sam and there's black reflective tape all up and down the backside of them. It blends in perfectly, until a focused light hits it.

Antonio doesn't give 'em any excuses. Between the dyno stuff and reflective strips he's lit up like a Christmas tree on fire.

Here's Sergio's bike again: it was drilled for a dynamo light that got moved up to the seatstay, and, although these holes won't let too much water through, aluminum tape is perfect for covering them up:

It'll work on SKS fenders equally as well. 

Sometimes certain frames/fender combos require a bit of fender scalloping to make room for the fork crown or the chain in the low gear. The easiest way to do it is figure out where the fender needs to be cut, mark it with a sharpie, and snip it a couple times with side cutters until you can wiggle the piece off like a loose tooth. 

It'll leave a jagged edge that can be filed smooth with a handfile or a dremel. Plastic fenders really shine in situations where the fender is wider than the gap between fork blades or seatstays. 

When installing fenders, use your fingers as a gauge to make sure they're centered over the tire. Do this with the adjusting nuts on the struts loose, and when it's centered, tighten them down. 

If the distance from the fender mount to the fender is too long, find some spacers at the hardware store to take up the slack. You'll need a longer bolt too, and look for a buttonhead so it doesn't poke out too much inside the fender.

If you don't feel like going to the hardware store, use a drilled and cut-to-size wine cork, like the cork in the first tip, and zip tie it. 

The annual mass fendering

10/10/25

It's that time of the year again, when the leaves start falling, the days get short, and a bunch of Riv staffers scramble to slap fenders back on their bikes. Yes, we could just leave them on year-round, and some of the older, wiser employees do just that, but leaving them off during the dry season means room for bigger tires, and less chance of rattling on rougher trails. Plus, once the struts are cut to length and you've got all the right spacers and bolts, they're so easy to take on and off that it's no problem to re-install them once rain is back in the forecast. 

Antonio just fendered his Roaduno (54.5cm frame, 74cm saddle height) above. Roadunos are sort of the ultimate commuter bike, but fendering bikes with track-outs can make rear wheel removal tricky. The wheel has to be slid out rearwards, rather than down, so the fender blocks its exit. Back in the ol' Quickbeam days, we used to cut the rear fender short, and too bad for whoever rides behind you, but lately we've been using these instead:

It's a wingbolt, and it's a perfect way to attach low weight stuff to your bike. If you attach the rear fender struts with these, you can spin them out with your fingers when you get a flat and give yourself enough room to remove the rear wheel. That way you can have a full length rear fender. We sell the brass ones shown above and some regular stainless ones too. 

Here are the other fendered employee bikes:

James put on some blockier SKS samples we had here. I think we deemed them a little too clunky to carry on the site, but they work fine of course.

Right click the image and check out the cork underneath the basket. It's zip-tied to the bottom of the basket to push the front of the fender down. Tricks of the trade, there.

The SKS fenders come with perfectly functional black, plastic spacers, that are meant to be stacked until they're the right length, but, if you're nerdy about this stuff, it can be fun to find some other spacer that's the perfect length, like James did here:

It doesn't have to be high-brow aluminum either. Cut and drilled corks work equally well, and especially the cheapy synthetic ones. If you want metal and a specific length, McMaster Carr has it.

Sergio popped fenders back on his Appaloosa. Sergio, an ex-randonneur, probably used to have perfect fenderlines, but he's mellowed out these days. A little garage door showing between the tire and fender doesn't bother him.

Calvin switched to smoother tires and fendered his Rosco.

Mark leaves his Quickbeam fendered year round. 

My Clem has fenders, but I installed some on my Roaduno as well, for some variety during the rainy months. I used old SKS fenders with Honjo hardware, strictly a DIY thing. I didn't use wingbolts, but I left the fender far enough away from the rear wheel that I can scooch it out when the tire is flat. Roman chopped my dropout short to make it easier. I haven't got around to safety tabbing the front fender yet, but I will.

I had the opposite problem James did; my fender was too close to my front tire. Whenever I'd climb out of the saddle, the bike would flex enough that the tire would graze the front of the fender and make this maddening "vuufft" sound. Many of you probably know the sound I'm talking about. Fortunately, the Mark's rack on the front made it an easy fix:

I took the front wheel off, took the bolt out of the rack and diving plate, and drilled a hole in the fender, using the hole in the rack as a guide for the drill bit. Then I pulled the fender up off the tire with a buttonhead screw, two old canti brake spacers, and a nut on top.

The down-n-dirty fix would be to drill or awl two small holes in the front of the fender and thread a zip-tie through those up to the basket. Then you could just tighten the zip tie until the fender clears the tire, no spacers required.

Last year's fender tip email is a good resource if you're tackling the job. I should really try to compile these somewhere where they'd be easy to reference.

We've got both sizes of our preferred fender, the SKS Bluemel, in stock now. Here's an ancient video on how we put them on. The SKS attachment hardware has changed over the years, but it's the same procedure, more or less. 

The classic splice

12/31/25

Here's how you can have a full length fender while still maxing out the tires. There wasn't enough room on this bike for the fender to go underneath the caliper and still clear the tire, so Mark, in his usual Mark-y way, kept the big tire and spliced the fender.

He cut the fender where it meets the caliper, shaved both edges smooth with a dremel, and re-attached the front piece using the front rack's diving plate. 

He found the right combination of spacers to match the curvature of the tire. This is a good example of why Mark is a Riv mechanic and I'm not. I wish I could be this good, but I get frustrated too easily and I'm too impatient. If this were my bike, I'd either size the tire down, bob the fender and leave the front part off completely, or just fender a different bike.

This setup is a lot more work, but the advantage, other than keeping the big tires, is that the caliper doesn't have to squeeze the fender to get the pads to the rim, and that little front fender is ultra stiff, so there's zero chance of it brushing the tire on standing climbs.