Cyclokairos

There’s a saying in education, “If you’ve taught one autistic pupil, you’ve taught one autistic pupil”. Well, if you’ve fitted one set of mudguards, you’ve fitted one set of mudguards. They each present their own challenges, or rather, each bike has its own idiosyncrasies. The plan was to go without on The Green Bike, but I couldn’t resist.

Many features held promise: eyelets at the dropouts, a drilled fork crown and brake bridge. Downward facing for the latter, and a first for me. But the bridge between the chain stays, surprisingly, given the attention to detail elsewhere, isn’t drilled.

In wanting to go as wide as possible with the tyres (700 x 35), I went with 45 mm wide mudguards (Honjo, silvered, and hammered). With inadequate space between the forks and chain stays, crimping was required. A piece of wood and a file provided a template. Some tapping with a ball peen hammer and the necessary indents were achieved.

Being Honjo, the mudguards do not come pre-drilled. Four holes for the rear mudguard: two for the stays, and one each for attachment at the bridges between the seat and chain stays. Some improvisation was required at the chain stay bridge; a p-clip and wine cork the solution – perhaps not the most elegant fix, but effective.

Up front, a fold sitting beyond the fork crown was put in the mudguard to help the fender line (sounds better with the American name), and a fork crown daruma was used. Only two points of attachment to the fork, a danger of the front of the mudguard waggling – we’ll see how things go.

The finished article – not too bad a fender line.

Time taken? Yonks. What’s that Mary Oliver line? “Attention is the beginning of devotion”, and I worship at the shrine of Honjo.