I took the Rambler out for a shakedown ride to the Farmers market. Although, it was not quite “fender” weather.
In the last couple of days I was able to get the VO Zeppelin fenders onto Rambler No.1. Overall I would say it went pretty well. The VO fenders require a bit of re-shaping to get the fender line just right, no big deal though. Mount up to the rear connection points went as planned, but there will be some fine tuning on bridge locations for the production run. Likewise with the front, we knew the crown was a couple of mm low compared to the production spec.
I ended up using the top mounted angle bracket for the front fender. The daruma bolt was just grazing the top of the tire. Production frames will have the crown about 5mm higher, and all should be good in the fender world. Things fit with the 42mm Nomads and 52mm fenders, but it is tight. This is not really the fault of the bike as there is still a few mm of space at the frame and brake contact points. The trick is finding a 58mm fender for a 700c tire. Fit would be superb with 38mm tires or a slightly wider fender. That sounds like another project for another day.
I have had a few questions about racks. So far I have fit both the Bruce Gordon Lowrider and the Nitto Mark’s Rack with no modification to the racks. Production frames will have the mid fork braze on located for an easy installation of both of these off the shelf racks.
The Mark’s rack is currently mounted to the crown with the center bracket. There is plenty of room for the Paul brakes full range of motion. With a little bit of strut bending the rack can be attached at four points to the bosses brazed into the crown.
In the long run I intend to offer a custom three-piece rack designed to incorporate the strong points of both of these racks into a singular modular system.