Winter is the toughest time of year for you and your bike and the elements do take their toll. However thing can be a lot more enjoyable with a bit of preparation. The first part of the series is about mudguards and which ones will best suit your bike.
Winterising Your Bike
Mudguards
Mudguards are an absolute must in winter, unfortunately most bikes these days won’t take proper mudguards.
Traditional Mudguards You may be lucky though or you might have thought about mudguards when you bought the bike originally. In which case you can fit proper traditional full length mudguards, which will not only keep you clean and dry but will keep your bike a bit cleaner as well. Also your riding buddies will appreciate it if you fit some kind of mudflaps as well so that spray does not end up in their face when riding behind you. We keep traditional mudguards in various sizes from Tortec and SKS
If you don’t have room or eyelets for traditional mudguards though, don’t despair. There are plenty of solutions to that problem and although they are not as good as the real thing they are not bad and there is a wide range of solutions available out there.
Giant Fenders If you have a giant Defy or Avail then you are in luck because Giant have their own mudguards which will fit your bike. There are a few caveats though, as they don’t quite fit all the sizes. If you bring your bike in though we’ll be able to advise you further.
Crud Raceguards are designed to fit most road bikes which don’t have clearance or eyelets for traditional guards. They are a bit of a faff to fit but ones they are fitted, they do keep the worst of the weather of you and your bike.
They are very flexible but not as robust as some of the other options.
SKS RaceBlade Long this is probably the best solution if you want something as robust as traditional mudguards but you don’t have clearance. The stays fit straight to the QR Skewers with special clips and the mudguard blades fit to a special bridge which will fit nicely under shallow drop brakes.
SKS RaceBlade and copies are an alternative which is easy to fit on practically any bike. Although they don’t give the best coverage, they are still reasonable and they are dead easy to fit and remove. You can use the provided rubber bungees or zip ties if you want them to be more securely fitted.
Next Week… We’ll take a look at what lighting is available
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