Kingfish
100 MW
Overview:
Beginning last winter I had pondered many hours on creating a custom rear rack for my full-suspension ebike (P1). With the 2011 New Year I finally cut the Gordian knot and migrated over to the new frame: All the parts were there right in front of me just waiting to tinker and play, and that's how the solution came about. It’s possible this may work well for other folks with similar frames.
My story begins with a newly minted ebike with full-suspension and specialized fenders to go with.
Unfortunately these fenders are shite! :x The rear fender wanders around the seat post; it cannot be fastened down tight enough – period. In addition the front and rear fenders are far too high and removed from the tires to be effective for anything other than a Photo-Op when first mounted. My don’t they look pretty.
Another troublesome issue is that there is not a reasonable place to mount fenders, let alone a rear rack. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Thinking outside the box I first evaluated how the original bike (P0) employed these devices:
The Rear Rack & Fender were previously attached at a hard-point already provisioned on the rear framework. The front fender was a kludged assembly with soft attachments on the forks and off the front brake fixture. I’ll begin with the front mod.
Phase 1: Front Fender Mod
After I put my new bike together – including the studded tires, the first ride had me headlong into the muck and crud of winter, and those studded tires threw crap all over the place. The image below well displays the results. Notice how far away the fender is from the tire (slightly protruding from beneath the front faring).
It dawned on me that I could re-use the fender from the old bike; mounting it on the new wouldn’t be too terribly difficult as the soft-points would essentially be the same. The small challenge was how to tie it off where the brake support would have been. The newer fork lowers are nicely supported by an arc of reinforced material and this made for a good spot; not perfect, but workable. Apologies for the dirty bike photos.
No guidance here; I would just conjure up any way of affixing so long as the mounting is static relative to the lower part of the fork and not rubbing against the tire. The soft-points actually fit better on the newer model forks because they are wider in diameter. So that’s it; a 3-point attachment and the fender is secured.
But, we are not done. The old fender on the new fork with the studded tires was still allowing a voluminous amount of crud to fling past. I resolved this by taking the now-removed front fender and cutting off the rear section to make a wider front extension. Reference image below:
The section scavenged is directly behind the front fork, and nipped-off about where the battery bag touches. Before mating the extension I swabbed down the contacting surfaces with Isopropanol, let dry, then slathered on Urethane, mushed the parts together – being careful with alignment, and allowed to dry overnight. The extension provides excellent forward coverage by about 6 inches, and nearly eliminates all overspray in the worst of conditions.
More in a moment…
~KF
Beginning last winter I had pondered many hours on creating a custom rear rack for my full-suspension ebike (P1). With the 2011 New Year I finally cut the Gordian knot and migrated over to the new frame: All the parts were there right in front of me just waiting to tinker and play, and that's how the solution came about. It’s possible this may work well for other folks with similar frames.
My story begins with a newly minted ebike with full-suspension and specialized fenders to go with.
Unfortunately these fenders are shite! :x The rear fender wanders around the seat post; it cannot be fastened down tight enough – period. In addition the front and rear fenders are far too high and removed from the tires to be effective for anything other than a Photo-Op when first mounted. My don’t they look pretty.
Another troublesome issue is that there is not a reasonable place to mount fenders, let alone a rear rack. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Thinking outside the box I first evaluated how the original bike (P0) employed these devices:
The Rear Rack & Fender were previously attached at a hard-point already provisioned on the rear framework. The front fender was a kludged assembly with soft attachments on the forks and off the front brake fixture. I’ll begin with the front mod.
Phase 1: Front Fender Mod
After I put my new bike together – including the studded tires, the first ride had me headlong into the muck and crud of winter, and those studded tires threw crap all over the place. The image below well displays the results. Notice how far away the fender is from the tire (slightly protruding from beneath the front faring).
It dawned on me that I could re-use the fender from the old bike; mounting it on the new wouldn’t be too terribly difficult as the soft-points would essentially be the same. The small challenge was how to tie it off where the brake support would have been. The newer fork lowers are nicely supported by an arc of reinforced material and this made for a good spot; not perfect, but workable. Apologies for the dirty bike photos.
No guidance here; I would just conjure up any way of affixing so long as the mounting is static relative to the lower part of the fork and not rubbing against the tire. The soft-points actually fit better on the newer model forks because they are wider in diameter. So that’s it; a 3-point attachment and the fender is secured.
But, we are not done. The old fender on the new fork with the studded tires was still allowing a voluminous amount of crud to fling past. I resolved this by taking the now-removed front fender and cutting off the rear section to make a wider front extension. Reference image below:
The section scavenged is directly behind the front fork, and nipped-off about where the battery bag touches. Before mating the extension I swabbed down the contacting surfaces with Isopropanol, let dry, then slathered on Urethane, mushed the parts together – being careful with alignment, and allowed to dry overnight. The extension provides excellent forward coverage by about 6 inches, and nearly eliminates all overspray in the worst of conditions.
More in a moment…
~KF