Mudflaps etc

As you can see in the above picture, mud and road crap is a bit of a problem.  Picked up on rides around London not in rain necessarily, but just on wet roads and on wet dirt.  The difference between here and Australia is that when it's cold the wet doesn't evaporate quickly (if at all) because it's cold and there is not much sun; this means the ground is always wet as it rains every few days even for a little bit.  This makes mudguards even more important.  The model I have on my randonneur bike are the SKS chromoplastics which originally came with a front mudflap; stupidly I cut the it off when I got them not knowing how useful they actually are.  You can see in the photo that road grit and mud gets sprayed all over the drivetrain and downtube from where the mudguard stops, this is what mudflaps are for.

So to counter this problem I bought a mudflap meant for a Brompton as I couldn't find sheet rubber readily, in Australia I was able to get rubber sheet really easily from Clark rubber, I haven't quite found the equivalent shop here yet.  The mudflap is made from a thinnish plasticky material that is quite floppy, about 1mm thick, normally I'm used to quite stiff mudflaps like on my Raleigh Superbe which is 3mm thick rubber.  However I've made a few additional holes to mount them on the SKS mudguards.

I've used the strut bolts on the sides to get it to wrap around which gives it more stiffness and also keeps water from coming out the side.  I would have liked it to go down further but it should be good for now, it sits around 12cm from the bottom to the ground, as you can see in the pic below the bottom of the mudflap is just about low enough to prevent most of the crap getting thrown from the front wheel onto the chainrings.

I'll have to take it out during my days off before next year to test it out.  Thanks for reading and merry christmas!