Day One

Well, after a lot of waiting, and a little hacking and cursing, the new SKS fenders are mounted on my 1999 Serotta Rapid Tour commuter. Waiting, because the bike shop mis-ordered the first set, for which I'd already waited a week; this cost me another week and a half (and two or three rain rides) waiting for the correct set. Hacking and cursing because, naturally, the mounting procedure couldn't go quickly and easily, and also due to the cruel whims of mother nature.

Serotta Rapid Tour all set up for commuting [bigger pic]

The hacking was necessary to get the fit of the fenders just right on the Rapid Tour, which has some very tight clearances (for a touring bike, anyway), which made the front fender a special challenge. Basically, the brake bridge bracket of the front fender is designed in a way that didn't let me raise it enough to clear the tire; the bottom of my headset interfered with raising the fender. I ended up coming up with a jerry-rigged combination of a long bolt and three nuts that moved the bracket away from the headset and worked OK for the first fitting, but which looked jerry-rigged, and that I feared would need constant adjustment and re-tightening.

Luckily, the rear fender went on without a hitch. The rear fender bracket fit just fine on the rear brake bridge. A nice surprise was that Serotta thoughtfully included a metal tab, apparently for fender mounting, that is attached with a braze-on bolt near the bottom bracket. So, I could simply attach the leading/front/bottom edge of the rear fender to that with no problem.

Mother nature is on the shit list because as I was working on the rear fender, the wind kicked up bigtime and blew all the parts I hadn't used yet into the grass from the top of my car where I'd carefully laid them out on the cardboard packaging. I'd even put the screws, etc. into a little plastic tray lid, for easy, yet protected, access. I guess the carboard piece and tray lid acted as a catapult for these parts as the wind kicked it up and carried it into the grass, because I found the parts spread out over a fairly wide area of grass. I guess I should be thankful that a) I was almost done, so there weren't many parts to lose, and b) I found most of the parts -- it could have been much worse. Nonetheless, I came away with only half of the little black endcaps that go on the fender struts to give the assembly a finished look. Since the rear will have a rack around it, I just put all the endcaps on the front struts.

I must say, that once all parts were mounted and tight, my "bounce test" revealed that the fenders don't rattle at all. And they look nice and neat, except for the front struts needing a trimming. Well, there's also the fact that the front fender has a bit of a "warp" near the front that causes it to look a bit cockeyed, but I'm trying not to think too much about that (otherwise, it'd drive me plumb crazy).

Day Two

I went to the hardware store today to get a better jerry-rig setup for the front bracket that would result in a more elegant arrangement than my day-one hack. I got a bigger, #10-2" bolt, some washers and lock nuts, and the most important thing - an aluminum sleeve. The aluminum sleeve takes the place of the two bolts that I'd used to "sandwich" the bracket in order to gain clearance in the hack solution. This all went together pretty nicely, I must say.

Serotta front fender mounting hack, improved [bigger pic]

I also got some bolt-cutters at the hardware store to trim down the extra material from the front fender struts, and some black "thread protectors" to replace the lost endcaps from yesterday. I had to wrap some electrical tape around the rear strut ends to get the thread protectors to fit better, but it looks nice.

More About My Setup

The bag, in case you're curious, is a Carradice "Bike Bureau" that I bought online from Wallingford Bicycle Parts (recommended). The bag is of waxed cotton (waterproof), and mounts very easily on the (Trek, but I want a Tubus) rear rack. Carradice is an English company and apparently is the oldest maker of bicycle luggage, or something of that nature. Anyway, it's a great bag, and my PowerBook fits great in it with the Waterfield Designs sleevecase for protection. The PB has suffered no ill effects after 235+ miles of commuting so far, in all conditions. A very detailed review can be found at etherfarm.com. By the way, I had a choice of left or right-side mounting and purposely chose left. Why? Because I mount my bike from the left side, and thus I almost always lean it to the right when parked pretty much anywhere. With the bag on the left, it's accessible while the bike is leaned up. It's accessible as soon as I've dismounted (which has come in handy during a couple of rainstorms), too. Keep this in mind if you choose to buy one.

The lighting system is a Light and Motion Apex high/low arrangement. I can't say enough about this system - it's great. Each of the lamps has three intensity settings, plus off, of course, so it's a very versatile setup. It has never let me down though all sorts of weather. I don't think this particular model is available any more, but I'd imagine anything they make is damn good.

Serotta Rapid Tour all set up for commuting [bigger pic]

I took a page from the Rivendell book and bought a slightly larger than usual frame (a 58cm vs a 56cm), and then set this bike up with the bars nearly level with the saddle. I have to admit that it's a very comfortable fit. When I'm climbing out of the saddle, my arms are very nearly relaxed. On the flipside, sprinting (the little of it I do) feels a little odd.

In contrast, when I got onto my Trek 5200 last weekend, I felt as though I was going to go over the handlebars for the first few minutes, due to the slightly shorter top tube, the lower bars, and the much lower trail on the Trek fork. However, I very quickly adjusted to the Trek (after all I have thousands of miles on it). Still, I think I'm preferring the Serotta's fit. I'm actually toying with getting a Serotta CSi made to my dimensions sometime (one can always dream).