This is a “how-to” post; particularly how to “marry” a Fox Remote RL cable holder assembly fork-mount with a Topeak A1 [front] Air Fender.

I’m a Topeak whore. I just love the bicycle accessories they produce; as they are really useful. One of the most useful accessories they’ve got are what they call “Air Fenders” – which are basically removable, inflatable mud-guards. Naturally being inflatable, you can deflate them; and wrap them up and store them in your bag – which is exactly why they’re awesome…

… until I changed my fork to a F-Series F100 Remote RL.

You see, the rear fender connects via a seatpost collar clamp, while the front fender mounts inside the fork-tube from below. The latter was hindered by the fact that the cable holder assembly of the new fork was in the way.

After a few weeks of riding. I thought about it, and confirmed with the Fox service center that taking this assembly out is of no consequence. So that’s exactly what I did – but that wasn’t the end of it.

The trouble with the [front] Air Fenders is that they seem to be “over-engineered” at the fork mount. Here’s what it looks like:

Physics of a stupid fork-mount

Notice that the way fork mount works is that when the bolt is tightened, it “compresses” those two “vented thingamabobs” Because those two thingamajigs are horizontally cut, they’ll naturally “slide” outward as they compress… that would provide the outward clamping force required to secure itself inside the fork tube.

Now there are three problems with this setup:

1. They’re plastic, and vented at that… minimum surface area to rub against the walls of the tube. I’ve tried modifying it by adding some silicone sealant – but that can only go so far.
2. The sideways expansion is only on two opposite sides… not uniformly around – which further minimizes the surface area. What we need is an evenly distributed expansion for maximum grip.
3. The mount’s design is stupid and convoluted.

Physics of a proper fork-mount

Consider the Fox Remote RL’s fork mount:

The black area is all rubber. And it expands via the same compression principles as the first mount mentioned. But it deals with the first and second problems in one go. The rubber surface (1) evenly expands outward (2) as it is being sandwiched by the screw.

And the proof that the previous mount was convoluted was simply to compare how many elements were required to make the Fox assembly as against the Topeak one.

Getting the best of both worlds

So naturally, all I needed to do was use Fox’s fork mount with the Air Fenders, and I ended up with one awesome bastard accessory. 

The funny thing here is that it was probably easier to manufacture the parts for the Fox assembly; it makes me wonder what in the hell Topeak R&D was thinking when it came up with the design of the mount? facepalm