Monday Musings (#34) – When all groads lead to ATB, cycling becomes one big game of rock, tire, fenders…
When it comes to riders’ opinions and preferences about this-or-that brand, or product, I’m a big believer in ye olde ‘to each, their own.’ Oh, you prefer a different high-end World Cup-proven super-stopper than me? Awesome. Choice is chief. You’re going to Zee until you can Zee no more before trying a LinkGlide drivetrain? No, I understand it 100%. Zee is fantastic. Perhaps by then, Shimano will sort out that chain packaging. Though I suppose you’ll be running an 11-speed chain either way?!
Yes, I see those eyebrows rising in judgment. Okay, fine, sure, when it comes to Plus tires, rigid forks, and single-speeding, I bristle a bit at folks who hold strong opinions despite never truly giving any of it a try. Urgh, just the number of times folks have tried to compare my 29+ rigid rip with its 64° HTA and <14psi in the tires to their 1988 Ritchey running 26×2.1″. Yeah, so. I admit, there’s not always bountiful Bicycle-Buddha energy around here.
Jumping back on track. It’s not often I find myself in full-throated defense of a brand or its products, even a brand or product I really like, especially in a work setting. But sometimes. Specific to this fenderful topic, a couple of times. I just can’t help but blow my whistle and pop out of the trenches into the incoming fire.
The customer came in spicy, my tongue is burning, and it’s all I can do to keep from dumping a bunch of extra hot sauce on the dish. But, straight-up-stereotyping, neither of us is ordering anything more than a medium from Indian Fusion*, so I try to dial back the temperature before we both lose any taste for the conversation.
My new friend walked in looking for a fresh fender set for their gravel-groad-ATB rig, and I opened up with an appetizer of my min-max favourites from fourth-generation family-owned SKS. He clearly didn’t like the flavour:
“SKS fenders used to be great, but now they’re crap. I had a pair that lasted me around twenty years, but now I can’t even get a whole season out of them.”
*{I’m regularly surprised how many folks I meet live in North Vancouver and haven’t eaten at/ordered from Indian Fusion. It’s fantastic!}
I count to five in my head, force a smile, and inquire as to what bike those legendary first SKS fenders were protecting. Of course, it was a steel ’90s Kona mountain hardtail, commuterized. Oh, did you run 26×1.5″ Schwalbe Marathons? He turns his nose up and replies, “No, Continentals.” I mean, Contis are great, can’t argue with that‽
I can picture the bike in my head. Welded Blackburn aluminum rear rack. Roach, or Core Rat, top-tube pad. Elastic bands around the hubs to keep them clean. Rear Shimano Rapid-Fire clicker, but the front died from trying to pull a rusted cable through a rusted housing for those big chainring shifts, and it’s been replaced with an old thumb shifter. The M737 pedals ‘just won’t die’ but have so much play in the axles they count as suspension. The gold-coloured Velocity Quill stem and Project 2 threaded fork bonded into a one-piece unit years ago, so it’s a good thing Kona didn’t cheap out on the headset bearings.
And now, MEATengines reader, you can claim 10,000 bonus points* if you know, without scrolling down, what the difference is between those legendary two-decade-deflectors and my new friend’s more recent SKS experiences.
*{Bonus points have ZERO value, monetary or otherwise. Not even bragging rights. No one cares. Sorry.}
I nod, I know exactly what’s happening here. Because I’ve experienced it myself on my ATB-converted Waltworks V1. The fenders aren’t the issue at all. What we’re really talking about here is tires, braking, and geometry. Your new bike is a gravel rig?
“Yes, I love it. I ride it everywhere.“
The capabilities of aggressive gravel rubber, whether it’s 40c, 45c, 50c, or what formerly qualified as WC XC race tires, far surpass any old 1.5″ slick. They practically beg the rider to take their commuter rig off-roading. And much like the fenders, I’d be willing to bet that you’re replacing tires significantly more often where those 26″ Continentals were hitting thousands and thousands of kilometers.
Last year, I picked up a stick rambling through Stanley Park and tore my rear fender apart. At first, I thought it was my wheel, and it was going to be a long walk home, but those steel fender stays are hardcore. I managed to zip-tie it back together to ride home.
I also made the choice not to run the plastic safety inserts for my front fender and picked up a big enough rock to leverage the stays right out of their captured nuts. I was lucky the fender failed instead of the bike throwing me over the bars. I was moving at skinny-tired trail speeds as opposed to being on the road or fast gravel.
And now it’s a date. We’re swapping stories from the same share-plate of riding ‘commuter’ rigs with last-generation Honzo geometry. He’s ridden a pile of Teal trails {that borderline between Green & Blue}, upgraded to a 180mm front brake rotor and a dropper post. The old rack and panniers have been replaced with frame bags.
So essentially, we’re talking about the survivability of old-school road fenders, off-road, on what amounts to a drop-bar mountain bike. There probably are more solids going up into those fenders in one trail ride than two decades of commuting.
We don’t have them in stock, but my fenders are also on their last legs, and I’m switching to a pair of SKS aluminum fenders this year. They’re heavier, just as expensive, and have less coverage. I previously used a wider set for light trails with some 29×2.6″ WTB Ranger tires, and they were both bombproof and had a fail-safe where the fender body unclips from the strut if something is jammed between it and the tire.
“Huh, yeah, those look exactly like what I want. Still made in Germany, too. Why don’t you have them in stock?“
I think you’ll see them around a lot more once folks come to terms with the fact that, for this application, full fenders are a wear item and a few more grams is a worthwhile cost of massively increased survivability. In the meantime, unfortunately, it’s easier just to think that something has been downgraded without acknowledging that you’re using it differently than before.
Hey, sometimes there are consequences for telling, showing, and reminding riders when they’re wrong. And maybe that was a cheeky way to finish our conversation. But we were both satisfied, and I’ll take a wry smile over someone exploding in my face any day.
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