The Benefit of Mudguards
Winter and wet weather riding certainly benefits from having
a good set of mudguards fitted to your bike. I’m sure most of us have returned
from a ride after being caught in the rain, plastered in road muck and
thoroughly soaked. Your vision can be significantly compromised by water
spraying into your face from your front wheel. Trying to follow other
handcycles is equally wet. All this, together with the possibility of germs and
other unpleasant substances within the road water infecting your eyes or lungs
makes riding in the wet very unpleasant and far more risky than riding in the
dry. Given all these problems it explains why handcyclists are always keen
followers of the weather forecast.
The problem when fitting mudguards to handcycles is that the guards are usually made for 700 wheels, while the wheels on most handcycle are the 650 size. The problem is greater because there aren't many convenient mudguard mounting points. My solution, which has taken several years to prefect, is presented here.
The problem when fitting mudguards to handcycles is that the guards are usually made for 700 wheels, while the wheels on most handcycle are the 650 size. The problem is greater because there aren't many convenient mudguard mounting points. My solution, which has taken several years to prefect, is presented here.
Figure 1. Mudguards fitted to a shark
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The obvious requirement for mudguards is to minimise road
muck and water being thrown from spinning road wheels together with my
secondary requirements to have a minimal performance degradation of the
handcycle and to require minimal maintenance.
From an engineering view point, mudguards fitted to a handcycle wheel is challenging. The loads that can be exerted on the guard can be surprisingly high together with long term exposure to vibrations. The trick with mounting mudguards is to mount them symmetrically, so the loads are balanced. This is easily achieved on the front wheel where the forks provide a convenient symmetrical mounting location, but the rear wheels are far more challenging.
After searching and trying some candidate mudguards, I tried ‘Roadracer’ manufactured by Crud, ‘Roadracer Mk2’ is the latest version. The Mk2 conveniently use the same body for both front and rear wheels but with different ‘nose and tail’ kits. These mudguards are designed to float over your wheel using minimal fixings as is explained at their web site. The mudguards are manufactured from polypropylene and so are flexible. This aids the fitting to 650 size wheels where they can be bent to accommodate the required sharper radius.
From an engineering view point, mudguards fitted to a handcycle wheel is challenging. The loads that can be exerted on the guard can be surprisingly high together with long term exposure to vibrations. The trick with mounting mudguards is to mount them symmetrically, so the loads are balanced. This is easily achieved on the front wheel where the forks provide a convenient symmetrical mounting location, but the rear wheels are far more challenging.
After searching and trying some candidate mudguards, I tried ‘Roadracer’ manufactured by Crud, ‘Roadracer Mk2’ is the latest version. The Mk2 conveniently use the same body for both front and rear wheels but with different ‘nose and tail’ kits. These mudguards are designed to float over your wheel using minimal fixings as is explained at their web site. The mudguards are manufactured from polypropylene and so are flexible. This aids the fitting to 650 size wheels where they can be bent to accommodate the required sharper radius.
