Motobecane Fantom Outlaw vs SKS Fenders

Nylon spacers and bent stays with a long bolt.

When is a bike "finished?" I'm not sure, but I hope I've about got this one done for my upcoming semester of bike commuting, and that this is that last upgrade/improvement for a while.

I started here with a new bike. I didn't like the gearing and ened up getting a new crankset and all that entails, detailed here.

My latest — and I hope last —  change, was to install SKS Chromoplastics P45 fenders and a set of
Schwalbe Marathon Supreme tires. What a royal pain it all was. It must have taken me eight total hours before I was finished.

The fenders look cool, but because I have disc brakes I had to do all sorts of bending and modification to get them on. I bought nylon spaces and longer bolts at the hardware store. Because I didn't know exactly what I was doing I bought a bunch of things just in case, and now have a collection of leftover pieces.

The stays on the front fender were way too long, which is good as it gave me bending room, but bad because the ends poked out like dangerous knives. I ended up getting a cutting tool to trim them.

The back was even harder. Again, more spacers, and a bunch of stretching the rack and bending the fender stays to get it all to fit around the brakes. It was really a juggle to get everything lined up and tightened down as it was all trying to explode like a wound up spring. The Motobecane has no chain stay bridge to fix the fender to, so I used the front derailleur pulley bolt. It doesn't put the fender in the perfect place, but it worked.

Schwalbe Marathon Supreme tires may be the hardest tires to mount I've ever had. What a pain. They are too loose at first and fall off, but the last inch is almost impossible. I pinched tubes twice, and I almost never do that.

I'm hoping the tires will be as bullet proof as they are advertised to be. I am not looking forward to changing a tire on the road.

What a load of whining, huh? But I'm thinking it will all be worthwhile when I ride my pretty, super custom, fully-fendered, nicely-panniered and low-geared, coffee-carrying, MagicShine lighted, way-cool bike to school.

The fenders match the bike pretty well, and even look better in person than in this photo.