Fendering The Crossroads
I’ve been needing a bike with fenders forever. In the past I might build up a temporary bike with fenders for wet days but I wanted to have a permanent fendered bike. I figured the Specialized Crossroads would be the best choice as it’s a good all around, practical bike and is able to carry things.
So I recently purchased these yellow, plastic Planet Bike fenders for it. I didn’t buy them specifically for the color but instead because the yellow was cheaper. I figured I could always paint them if I didn’t like the look. I’d rather have gotten a nicer metal fender like something from Velo Orange but didn’t want to spend that much money especially when fitting fenders is so iffy.
The Panaracer Gravelking tires on the bike measure out to 41mm and the fenders are 45mm. As was expected I had to do some tweaking to get the fenders to fit. This included some grinding on the rear rack bracket and elongating a hole on the fender bracket to get the fender closer to the seat stay bridge. Also some fine tuning of the adjustable braces.
I got them installed with no room to spare in some places. I imagine I will always be tweaking them to keep them from rubbing.
As for the color… I think I’ll just leave them as is. The wild color combo is growing on me and the brightness of the yellow surely helps when it comes to being seen.
Fenders can be a PIA to adjust, but are worth it to keep spray off your clothing. My fenders have occasionally rubbed on my studded tires this winter creating quite a racket, but only because riding on packed snow is like riding on washed dirt road. I had to tighten the fender recently.
It’ll be interesting to see how these handle the gravel roads around here which I’ve been avoiding till things dry up from the snow.