What Are Bicycle Fender's For

Skills + Knowledge

April 02, 2019

Hey guys, Dustin here, CEO of sixthreezero. Want to explain to you today, what are bicycle fenders for? I think it's been this great mystery, a lot of people see 'em, they don't know what they're good for, what they're bad for, especially on cruiser bikes. We get a lot of questions, do we need 'em, do we not need 'em? So, let's dive in.
What are bicycle fenders for? So, pretty cut and dried, bicycle fenders do actually have a purpose, which is to catch the water spraying off of a tire. So, another term for a bicycle fender would be a mudguard. Just like a car, something like that. If there's water on the ground, your tire rolls through it, that water is going to spray off of the tire, a lot of times up onto the back of the rider. So, for people riding in very wet areas, Seattle comes to mind, the UK perhaps, where it rains a lot, there's gonna be water on the ground frequently. Now if you don't think you're ever gonna be riding when there are puddles, wouldn't be an issue, but if you're gonna be out riding a lot you'd think it's gonna be hard for you to avoid water on the ground, I would advise using some kind of fender.
Now, fenders have kind of evolved. I think they started as sort of a purposeful element, to protect from the spray up of the water, but in the cruiser market, in particular, cruiser comfort, some hybrid, like our EVRYjourney, Ride in the Parks, the fenders have become this design element. So, on mountain bikes they're not quite as pretty, they're more there strictly sticking out of the back to protect from the water splash up. They don't have as pretty, elegant of a look as on the bikes that we do here at sixthreezero. A lot of times, they're color matched to the frames, things like that.
So, my thought is again, if your conditions are dry you don't need them, but if you like them, then do it. And we actually in our customizer, you can add fenders to a lot of our models to see what it looks like. You can change the fender color if you wanna swap it out, or do something different. So you can play around with it.
My personal preference is I like cruisers with fenders, it kind of gives it a more vintage look. It also adds another color to kind of give contrast to the white wall tires on the models that have white walls. Also for the all black bikes, it makes it even sleeker, just more black to the bike period. Or sometimes people do mismatch on the fenders. A lot of times people will do chrome fenders on a black bike. Or if you're really crazy, and you think you have a good design idea you could mismatch a light mint green with a white, sometimes that looks nice. But yeah, white fenders on a women's bike or purple with a baby blue or a mint or something like that. I'm not a designer, so don't take my color choices, but that's kind of it. Yeah, fenders have become quite popular in the recreational market. I think most people now just like 'em for the aesthetic, but they do have a purpose as we said for the splash up.
So, comment below, do you use fenders, do you not use fenders, do you think they've helped in the rain? Let us know, comment below, we'd love to hear. If you're on YouTube, if you're on our website, shoot us an email, give us a call. You can reach us by phone (310) 982-2877, or shoot us an email theteam@sixthreezero.com. Don't forget, browse our bikes, top navigation of our website, and enter your height and your weight in our body fit tool. It's on all the product pages, and it's gonna tell you which bikes fit and don't fit your body. It will give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and if it's a thumbs down, please reach out, we can always customize a bike to fit you.
And lastly, don't forget, we have a 365-day test ride your bike policy. If you get your bike and it doesn't fit, you don't love it, or anything else that makes you not wanna keep it, you have 365 days to send it back. 'Cause our goal at sixthreezero is to make sure that every bike fits our rider's bodies.