Having just had yet another set of SKS guards crack at the seat stay bridge, I’m wondering about switching to PDWs. I struggle with the price, but the alternative is a new set of SKSs every year, and various rattles as they fall apart in between.

I use 25mm tyres, and have read conflicting reports about whether they’ll work. I’ve got disc brakes, so I’m not trying to squeeze them under a caliper and can run them a little further away from the tyre if needed. Is it likely to work?

Has anyone tried both SKS and PDW guards and regretting paying for the PDWs?

Obviously the fact that they come with my initials etched on them is a nice touch.

I’ve got both SKS Bluemels and PDW full Metal Fenders, both for 35mm tyres…they both work great. I’ve had the bluemels for 2 years, nothing has gone wrong, the PDWs I’ve had for only 6 months, so can’t really comment.

The narrow PDW only just offer adequate coverage for big 23s/small 25

Haven’t used PDWs (though they look pretty sturdy in the flesh) but just to throw in another option: https://www.radialcycles.co.uk/radial-avert-pro-mudguards-1.html

They’re fairly short so you’d probably want to drill them and fit some Raw flaps or similar, but they seem pretty stable so far. They’re narrow, too (I still have an unused set of the narrow ones which they originally advertised as 35mm; they’d be fine for 23s but marginal on most 25s.)

Mind you, I’ve never broken an SKS (other than the flaps) even on a commuter with several thousand miles on it, so I might not be the best reference point 😉

Interesting that people have such wildly different experiences of the SKS guards. One theory is that it’s down to whether you bend the guards to match the curve of the wheels when fitting. I tend to do this a bit as I can’t bear to look at guards with uneven gaps.

My latest SKSs came with a plastic seat stay bridge rather than a metal one. I thought this might improve things, but instead, the movement between clip and guard caused the edges of guards to wear away, and then it cracked.

Tortec don’t crack and are much cheaper. You can use the SKS fittings left on the bike too.

My suspicion is that it’s down to the fixing, or otherwise, of the mudguard at the chainstay bridge. Failure to secure properly means forwards and backwards movements that weaken at the seatstay brake bridge. My SKS mudguard clamp snapped there, but the Tortec guards did not.

My guards have always been well secured at the chain stay bridge, usually with a long bolt into the bridge and a couple of nuts to secure the bolt and guard with the right spacing.

Long-time SKS user here but I too got sick of changing them every 12-18 months and have had a pair of PDW on now for just over a year. Very sturdy, no rattles and look as good as mudguards ever will.

I’ve had SKS on proper winter bikes with full fittings, bodged them in to race bike with minimal clearance and everything in between. Same result, something breaks before two years are up.

new set of SKSs every year

my SKS guards last for ages, and hardly cosseted.

I recently had a front SKS guard crack at the mounting point for the fork crown. They were about 2 years old. My only previous failure was on a rear guard at the rivet where the stay is bolted on. I had to bodge it with a zip tie as I was on a 200km audax, and the damned thing drove me crazy by squeaking the entire way. replaced with Berthoud steel guards, which are a pain to fit but don’t move or break in use.

Has anyone tried both SKS and PDW guards and regretting paying for the PDWs?

I’ve used both. Used sks for years but got fed up with them falling apart after less than a year. Saying ‘my guards last ages’ means nothing if you don’t consider milage. I do about 5k miles on my wet/winter commuter and sks just don’t last, they alway break at the same points.

Tried pdw last time but although they’re solid there was a lot of twanging going on because they’re metal. Sold the PDW’s as I wanted black guards, fitted sks and they lasted around a month before one of the metal bits that the stays go through cracked – sks replaced under warranty.

I would go pdw again if I could get them for a decent price in black.

What are you guys doing to them? I’ve had a set of Chromoplastics on my commuter for 8 years before it died!

Edit: Approx 6000 miles a year in all weathers.

What are you guys doing to them?

British crappy roads, cause vibration that SKS just can’t cope with. I’ve had both the front rivets fail and the rear bridge crack.

However, both can be solved; the front rivets can be replaced with a small nut & bolt, with some super glue to hold it all together. With the rear bridge put some insulation tape between the guard and metal bridge, plus a rubber washer between the bolt and frame to dampen the vibration.

What are you guys doing to them? I’ve had a set of Chromoplastics on my commuter for 8 years before it died!

Edit: Approx 6000 miles a year in all weathers.

I had one set fail at about the same age as yours, and a second set fail at less than 2 years. I suspect luck plays a large part.

I have used SKS for many years and now have both SKS and PDW, and have had no problems with either.

I suspect that the problems others experience are down to the guards not being adequately fastened to prevent movement, and in that respect the rear seatstay bracket for the SKS is probably always going to be an Achilles Heel. Although I still have a couple of bikes where I’ve had to use that bracket, I’ve always found it practically impossible to squeeze the bracket around the sides of the mudguard sufficiently to prevent the mudguard being able to slide slightly backwards and forwards within the bracket. Even though I have never had a breakage, I don’t like the brackets.

The best solution is to have a boss in the seatstay bridge to allow the mudguard to be drilled and bolted directly to the bridge, like the bosses which are now pretty much standard on the chainstay bridges of bikes designed to take mudguards. With a custom steel frame you can also request a similar braze-on in the fork crown to allow the front mudguard to be similarly bolted directly to the fork (drill out the rivets used to fix the bracket to the front mudguard and use one of the resulting holes for the bolt).

However, I have always been careful when fitting the guards to try to fix the mudguard without stressing it. So I have usually bolted the rear mudguard to the chainstay bridge first, and then held up/offered the guard to the seatstay bridge to determine where to drill the hole for bolting to the seatstay bridge. When doing that I have always taken care not to bend, squeeze or push the mudguard, and just to let the mudguard’s natural curve dictate where the drill hole must be. On some bikes, to maintain a ‘good line’, and again to avoid unnecessary bending of the mudguard and keep it the ‘right’ distance from the tyre, I have inserted a few mm of washers between the mudguard and boss and used a slightly longer bolt.

I suspect it might help to use a rubber washer for the fixings and/or the front mudguard bracket, to absorb vibration (especially if riding on rough or gravel roads a lot), but I have not bothered to do that yet.

I suspect that the problems others experience are down to the guards not being adequately fastened to prevent movement

The part of the front guard in front of the fork just sheared off one of mine and flew off down the road, not quite sure I could’ve mounted that more securely…

The part of the front guard in front of the fork just sheared off one of mine and flew off down the road, not quite sure I could’ve mounted that more securely…

Yep that’s where the front one fails for me too. This set might last longer though as the fork has mount under the crown so hopefully less movement, and I’ve used a rubber washer.

On the subject of sks, without doing the usual bodge on the front guard to move the stays to be mounted outside the guard rather than inside, that part of their design is terrible – why design a front guard with a water run off point built in that flows onto your feet ?

The problems with mine are definitely not down to not securing properly, although the plastic clip on my latest ones make it impossible to crimp the clip to prevent all movement there (I’ve never been sure that crimping was helping the problem rather than making it worse)

I eventually drilled it and bolted it on to the clip, but only after it’d started to crack.

Interesting about the PDWs being noisy. The fitting video shows plastic stickers between the stays and guards. Did you get/use those?

Interesting about the PDWs being noisy. The fitting video shows plastic stickers between the stays and guards. Did you get/use those?

Yes, but they’re noisy because they’re metal. You get a lot of resonating twanging when you go over broken surfaces for example. No worse than sks creaking I guess.

My only real reason for changing was colour – I had the gunmetal pdw ones but wanted black, so got the sks matt black with black stays 🙂

Interesting about the PDWs being noisy

they are not noisy (on my bike). they were until i put a small dense foam pad between the rear brake and the top the guard as it would clang over bumps. if they are rattling round the metal clasp then you need to get the pliers out and clamp them tighter.

The part of the front guard in front of the fork just sheared off one of mine and flew off down the road, not quite sure I could’ve mounted that more securely…

It’s interesting/surprising that the unsupported short front section should shear off. What width was it? I’ve only ever used the P35 and P45 guards, and I guess that wider=less rigidity (assuming SKS use the same thickness for all widths) and more movement and flexing of that part of the guard, resulting in more liklihood of cracking.

I have had problems getting an SKS mudguard to fit in a close clearance frame that was supposed to take mudguards, but on which the italian manufacturer had used a racing fork crown which gave so little clearance that I had to cut away the sides of the mudguard and place a large rubber washer between the underside of the crown and the mudguard to stop vibration. I could not get on with that bike, and soon stopped riding it, but if I had carried on I’m sure the guard would have cracked apart.

On the subject of sks, without doing the usual bodge on the front guard to move the stays to be mounted outside the guard rather than inside, that part of their design is terrible – why design a front guard with a water run off point built in that flows onto your feet ?

I never found this to be a problem, and now I avoid riding in the rain anyway. What I have found makes a huge difference when riding on wet roads, is fitting a nice long custom mudflap. I use a bi-laminate composite mudflap of my own design (in other words a piece of damp proof course and a backing strip cut from a plastic milk bottle to hold it in position), which is so long that it stops almost all the spray that would otherwise hit my shoes and bottom bracket etc.

What width was it?

P35

I never found this to be a problem, and now I avoid riding in the rain anyway. What I have found makes a huge difference when riding on wet roads, is fitting a nice long custom mudflap

I have nice long flaps 🙂 The sks spray from the front guard top stay bracket is a well know issue, solved by drilling out the rivets and moving the mounting bracket on top of the guard rather than inside.

I don’t accept that failure is a mounting error. I had two snap, swapped them for some Tortecs I had already (The sks looked nicer), and these performed flawlessly using exactly the same mounting. It’s the robustness of the chromoplastic that is the issue. Had a Bluemel fail on the trike at the chainstay bridge, and some commuters that have basically come a little loose in the rivets. It’s a vibration issue.

P35

Interesting. I guess this is a problem which is difficult to analyse beyond anecdote, because of the potential variations in the bikes to which mudguards are fitted, the potential variations in how they are installed by different people, and the variations in how the bikes are used.

Interesting about the PDWs being noisy

they are not noisy (on my bike). they were until i put a small dense foam pad between the rear brake and the top the guard as it would clang over bumps.[/quote]

You get a lot of resonating twanging when you go over broken surfaces for example. No worse than sks creaking I guess.

In my experience with both SKS and PDW mudguards you are likely to get noises which will only occur when you go over a rough surface. Some of us will simply tolerate this, others will persist until we’ve identified what is hitting/moving against what and cured it. Typical examples are the mudguard stays being too close to – or touching – racks or brake calipers. My PDWs made a noise whenever I went over a bump because the front stay was only a couple of millimetres from the front disc caliper, and the solution was to increase the distance with a longer bolt and extra spacer to fasten the stay to the eyelet.

slowster has anyone ever accused you of over analysing things? 🙂

It’s a vibration issue.

Well it’s a design issue, with vibration the cause of the failure. Why they don’t use some re-enforcing at the weak areas and bigger rivets I don’t know. Ridiculous that you buy them, then have to make a loads of bodges to fix a crap design.

slowster has anyone ever accused you of over analysing things?

Yes, but they quickly change their minds when I invite them to discuss some examples of what they think is me over analysing things. In fact, very often they tell me they were wrong to even suggest it in the first place and that we don’t need to discuss the examples.

🙂

I’ve been in touch with SKS and they’re sending me a replacement guard FoC, so I guess I won’t be investing in a set of PDWs just yet.

It’s a shame that the SKS guards aren’t more durable, but it’s good to see that they support their products.

Whilst we’re over analysing stuff, it occurs to me that users of this forum aren’t very representative of the market for mudguards so whilst a lot of us are disappointed by the durability, we’re probably putting in more miles in a year than the average mudguarded bike sees in its life.

It’s a shame that the SKS guards aren’t more durable, but it’s good to see that they support their products.

Yes I got a replacement set too from sks after contacting them directly. Emailed on the Friday and had a replacement set on the Tuesday. I did originally contact Tredz, the place I bought them from, but their customer service was dire as they kept coming back with ‘we’re waiting for the supplier to come back to us’.