Last Updated on February 18, 2023
Single speed bikes are great for commuting to work, great for hill climbing and town riding. Since building my single speed bike I have found I use it for all cycling barring long rides or rides when I know other cyclists will have gears. My singlespeed cycle isn’t slow either, at the time of writing I have 30 KOMs on Strava, the majority of which I have ‘won’ on my single speed bike.
My single speed bike was built using a frame I bought off ebay for fifty quid thinking it has carbon forks (which it doesn’t) and a front crank and wheels that were being discarded by a friend who rides a fixie. The bike was built by the very talented and always reasonable Kevin (Ipswich Bicycle Doctor). The other bits and bobs that make up a bike came from the epic used parts stock that Kevin curates.
You’ll notice my bike looks, well, a bit scrappy… that’s deliberate! This bike is by no means valuable (in monetary terms anyway) but I still don’t want it nicked, so a bit of gaffa tape here, a bit of electrical tape there and with any luck my steed will look less desirable to ‘erberts wot nick stuff. Possibly not I know, but I’m a lot more willing to leave this bike locked up in town than I am my nice geared road bike.
How to fit mudguards on a single speed bike.
These instructions will of course also work with fixies, geared road bikes (racers) and pretty much any other bike on earth!
The bike that my single speed once was wasn’t really designed to take mudguards, but I got fed up of arriving at work looking like I’d slid down a dog dirt coated bannister rail so I set about asking the friendly folk over at CycleChat how I could go about fitting mudguards to a bike that wasn’t designed to take them. As is often the case at CycleChat a quick search of the forum revealed that someone else had asked the same question a while back and there was pages of useful information containing the answer I needed.
All answers pointed to buying a Crud Roadracer MK2 mudguard set. Other mudguard sets for bikes with little or no clearance for mudguards are available, but the Crud Roadracer MK2 came recommended and are cheap! In my case the cost was even lower because a friend had a spare set following a recent upgrade. I’ve done pretty well out of these sort of opportunities, perhaps I’m a cycling Womble?
So sorry to disappoint but there are no list of instructions included with this blog post; just buy some Crud Roadracer mudguards and follow the fitting instructions! Do be careful when fitting these mudguards though; when they’re not made of the thickest plastic in the world so can snap if you’re not careful, which is why in the photos below you might notice that there’s a small plastic rivet holding the two pieces of my rear guard in place.
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| Before – wet bum in rain guaranteed |
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| After – no more turning up at work feeling like I’ve had a bum wee |
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| Just be careful you don’t snap these mudguards when fitting them , or you’ll have to find a way of fixing them back together like I have with this plastic rivet |
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