Of all the tasks I carried out whilst building up my Thorn Audax, the fitting of the guards was by far the fiddliest and most frustrating - especially with cold hands in the garage!!
Mine came with little 'T' shaped black plastic pieces which fit (with some difficulty) through the mounting slot. The stay wire then goes through the bolt, and into the black plastic piece. The obvious problem here is that the plastic piece has an end on it, meaning that the mudguard is pushed up above the wheel profile by some margin. The only way to deal with this seems to be to measure the excess and trim it off with a hacksaw.
My worry here is that, as I bought 45mm guards to cover any larger wheels/tyres in the future, I don't want to lose length off the stay. So what I have done is lose the plastic bits off the ends, and simply loosen the bolts and move the guards to the correct positions.
I've seen quite a few pics of bikes where people appear to have done the same - I also have in mind the idea of cutting off the 'cap' bit of the plastic pieces and putting it on the exposed end of each stay.
Has anybody else done this, and any thoughts?
