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WHS reviews: Fenders (mud guards) and mud flaps

For the best results ridin in rain, fenders should have a certain width and length, but also a mudflap is needed to keep your feet dry. In my testing I determined what goes on, and it is not just about water from the tyres but water being sprayed up when riding on wet roads. The deeper the puddle, the bigger the spray is. A fairly wide mudflpa is actualyl needed to keep your feet dry from the spray from puddles. When the puddle is deep and you ride through at reasonable speed (ca. 18 km/h) already the amount of water can be such that it overwhelms the mudflap, it will get deformed and lets water pass. This also means to protect your fender and mudflap from damage that that should be deformable. The best I think is a heavier rubber type mudflap that you can buy from Bibia. This used to be mounted as standard on bicycles (definitely already in the 1970s, possibly earlier, I bought some old leaflets from a few manufacturers of bicycles from the late 1960s, I will analyse them when I get back to NL), but at some point they were not insallled on bicycles, especially the last 5-10 years, for some reason. This is stupid for NL where it rains a lot.

Experiments:

I made some videos of what happened and it was interesting how wide the spray is and how high it reaches. This is clearly the main issue that gets your shoes wet, on wet asphalt over a longer ride, or on a short ride just riding through puddles. People tend to evade puddles, and this is why... I found that the biggest mudflap I could find, from Bibia, ii was still not good enough to ride through deep pubbles of ca. 10 cm, at reasonable speed.

In that respect maybe it makes sense to not install mud flaps, but really, you will get wet feet simply riding on wet roads from the spray from the bottom of water being picked up and let go immediately so for that muflaps are very useful.

The bicycles I use are touring bikes, and mudflaps add some weight and some air resistance but I don't care.

The Bibia mudflap, size, weight: 109 g. Total height 21.5 cm, total width 19.5 cm.

More to come.

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