SKS Speedrocker mudguard set

The SKS Speedrocker mudguards are easy to fit, provide room for really fat tyres and are free from rubs and rattles. Their only significant fault is that riders following you will wish the rear guard was a bit longer.

• Pros: Easily fit just about any bike; hassle-free in use
• Cons: Rear could be longer; toe overlap

SKS has done a bang-up job of the Speedrockers. They'll fit around tyres up to about 38mm, as long your frame has room for them. The front comes in two pieces to avoid the perennial problem of squeezing a guard under the fork crown and the rear has a sliding component to fit against the seat tube.

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The front guard is long enough to keep your feet dry, though it's not as ground-tickling as SKS's Longboard guard, and the rear does a decent job of keeping the wet off your bum. However, it only extends round the tyre to about the 10 o'clock position, so spray off the lower segment of the wheel is thrown up at anyone following your wheel.

SKS bills the Speedrockers mostly for gravel/adventure/touring riding so it's perhaps not entirely fair to criticise them for being less suitable for group riding, but they're intended for road bikes too, and that means group rides. I hope SKS has a longer version in the works.

The details of the Speedrockers are mostly really well thought out.

They mount to your bike with plastic mouldings at the ends of the stays. These hold Velcro or rubber straps that wrap round the seatstays or fork tubes. The fork crown and seatstay bridge aren't used as attachment points at all, so it doesn't matter whether they have holes or, in the case of the seatstay bridge, even exist at all.

The Velcro straps are for the fork, and they're quite long. Make sure you fit them so they finish on the outside of the fork blades or they'll flap around in your spokes, which is really annoying…

Undo a 3mm hex screw and the anodised aluminium stays slide in and out to adjust the length. At the shortest setting there's still a good 2cm of clearance over a 28mm tyre, so you really can pretty much go as fat as your frame will take.

The stays go over the top of the guard and they're covered by a plate that fits in a moulded recess. That means the outer surface of the guard looks very smooth and tidy, but there's a lump protruding from the inside of the guard toward the tyre. Inevitably, mud accumulates here if you ride in seriously messy conditions.

To be fair, mud always accumulates somewhere if it's sufficiently thick and sticky, which is why full mudguards for mountain bikes have never taken off; mudguards should really be called rainguards or wetguards. The Americans have it right: fenders, because they fend off spray.

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Anyway, this lump on the inside of the guard means you have to run it further away from the tyre and for the front guard that means you can get a lot of toe overlap. Very low-speed manoeuvres have to be ratcheted carefully to avoid snarl-ups. The stays are aluminium, so it'd be fairly easy to cut them shorter, unlike the hard stainless steel stays of some SKS guards, but that would only get you a few more millimetres.

The front guard comes in two pieces so you don't have to deal with that awkward space under the fork crown. The front piece has a little upward kick at the back that looks like an aerodynamic spoiler on a 1990s go-faster saloon car until you realise it's there to stop any spray that gets through the gap from being thrown up into your face. Clever.

The rear guard has one main piece that goes between the seatstays, with an adjustable extension to the seat tube where it's held in place with another rubber strap.

This is the only place where clearance might be constrained by the guard itself, and if there's not enough room under your seatstay bridge, you can always route the guard over the top of it. A bit of trimming might be necessary in that case.

Fifty quid is a lot of money for a set of mudguards, though they're a fiver less than the Kinesis Fend Offs that Dave tested earlier in the year. I'd say their quality and ease of fitting – and that they'll fit virtually any bike – makes them worth the money.

The SKS Speedrocker Extension (£9.99) is also available now. The extension is made of black, impact-resistant plastic and can be clipped easily onto the Speedrocker mudguard, extending it by 170 mm. It can be mounted and removed in just a few seconds without any tools. 

Conclusion

The SKS Speedrocker mudguards are just the job if you have a go-anywhere bike and don't want to get soaked when it rains. They're dead easy to fit and work very well. My criticisms are minor. I've lived with the toe overlap for several months without serious incident and got used to it, though my riding mates have made it very clear they'd like the rear guard to be longer.

Verdict

Very good wet protection for fat-tyred road and gravel bikes