My ass was wet all last weekend from riding in the rain. The rains are back this weekend (snow tomorrow?) and I finally broke down and bought a rear fender. I felt a little stupid spending 14 bucks on a piece of plastic that clips onto my seatpost, knowing full well that I could easily make one.

There are several different ways to create your own DIY fender. Last November, during a time when I was pretty hard up for cash—subsisting on apples I stole from neighbors trees—I made my own fender out of one of those gigantic plastic liquid detergent bottles.

It’s really easy: with a sharp knife, cut from the top of the bottle downward. Make sure you make measure the size of your tires and match the width of your fender accordingly. Keep cutting into the bottom of the bottle about three inches. With these three inches of flat plastic, simply zip tie it (multiple times) to your seat post. The same thing can be done with a milk carton, but the plastic of a laundry detergent bottle is significantly stronger.

If you’re worried about total wheel coverage, that will also protect your chain, etc., this guy demonstrates a way to make a fender with a coroplast campaign sign. You can order one of these for free from politicians or, better yet, swipe one from a neighbor you don’t like.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 4:34 pm and is filed under bikes!. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.