Berthoud stainless fenders review

I purchased these for one reason: the SKS plastic fenders I was running were too flimsy to support my Lumotec light. My unofficial second reason is they're mighty handsome!

The fenders are carried by the fine folks at Wallingford Bike in New Orleans. I ordered the fenders on a Friday morning and they arrived Monday morning. That's hurricane ravaged New Orleans to Kent, Washington over a weekend. All of my orders from Wallingford have arrived this quick and it goes to show how much they appreciate their customers. The fenders arrived in a big, well padded box and shipping was only $8.00 bringing the total cost to $60.00.

Upon removing the fenders the first thing I noticed were the directions: there are none! These are not fenders for the mechanically challenged. The folks at Wallingford have plenty of warnings to this effect and if you buy a set and get frustrated that you can't install them you really have no one to blame but yourself. Fortunately, fenders are pretty straightforward and anyone with any mechanical competence should be able to figure these out. You will definitely need a drill to install them. If you can't, Peter White has pretty detailed directions on his site at: http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/berthoudinst.asp

My first problem came when I tried to fit the fenders into the fork. At 40mm wide the fenders are too wide to fit my Interloc alloy/carbon fork even though that fork is designed for 57mm reach brakes. Fortunately, I also have the Interloc Tange Prestige steel fork which easily had room for the fenders. Since I eventually plan to add a front rack mounted bag this is something I would eventually have done.

To install these fenders you will need a powerdrill as there is no hole for attaching the fender to
the brake bridge. Ideally, these fenders are designed to be used with a frame that has the brake bridge tapped for fenders. Unfortunately, most frames these days lack this feature. You'll need to improvise in this case. For me that meant using the L-bracket from my SKS front fender. Drilled two holes and used some stainless screws and nylock nuts to secure the clip to the fender. On the front end Berthoud include a special bolt that slides over the brake bolt and hangs down from the crown. The allows the front fender to be pulled up nice and snug into the fork for a rattle free fit. Why they include this for the front but don't include any sort of mount for the rear brake bridge is a bit baffling. The front mounting bolt proved to be much too long and I wound up using the Dremel tool to trim it.

The fender stays are one piece U shaped units that were a breeze to mount. They also appear to be stiffer than the stays on the SKS fenders. You will need a Dremel or bolt cutters to trim the stays once you've set them to the right length.

For the light mount I took a strip of stainless sheet and bent it into an L shape. I drilled a hole for the light and two smaller holes to bolt the mount to the fender. I also drilled two small holes to route the wire internally through the fenders. The edges of the fenders are rolled under to give them a smooth edge and this also provides a perfect channel for tucking in lighting wires. I secured mine with some silicone epoxy just to keep them from coming loose. The end result is a very clean looking light set-up.

So far I've only ridden the fenders around the block a few times. They are impressively stable with no rattles. The extra coverage in the front and back is also nice when plowing through puddles. The light mount seems to work great, I was worried about the light reflecting off the fenders (they're quite shiny) but it hasn't been an issue.

On the left you can see the wire from the light disappearing into the fender and reemerging just behind the fork blade. The mount is a simple strip piece of stainless steel I picked up at the local Ace Hardware. It was shaped with a Dremel tool and pliers. Hardware is all stainless. The right picture shows the non-drive side and the wingnut used to allow for easier tilt adjustment. In hindsight I probably should have put the light further forward on the fender to allow room for a future front rack. The Cateye strobe is attached to the fork with a Cronometro Nob. The big blue thing in the center picture is my Carradice Overlander bag. Yes, they made blue bags and this one is huge.