Hi Dave,
Some notes on fenders, and a couple of add-ons on lighting circuitry:
1) Fenders:
1.1) Brands: I'm using VO Zeppelin alloy fenders, size 650B x 52 mm. Sorry if I misled you into thinking that I had Honjo fenders. I had wanted to get a pair of those when I was assembling my bike, but they weren't available when I needed them. Compass Bikes do offer Honjo 650B x 58 mm hammered fenders, and they look the business (and for USD 189 they should!) You mention a 62 mm Honjo, though -- I didn't see that measurement on the Compass site.
The VO Zeppelins are USD 120/pr cheaper, and the 52 mm width works very well with my 26 x 1.6 Supremes. The latter are 39mm actual width inflated, so fit well within the Zeppelins, which are 52 mm external dimension.
VO fenders are, in my experience, very good quality, sturdy, and reasonably easy to fit. (More on that below.) VO sell both 650B and 26" fenders, the latter in stainless and alloy, 60 mm width. (I didn't see a 62 mm measurement.) Their fenders are also a good length, both fore and aft.
I also prefer alloy to plastic. I opted for the 650 B size, because I planned to use 1.6 or 1.75 tires, both of which will fit within my 52 mm fenders.
1.2) Fenders and Raven measurements:
* On the rear, there's 65 mm of space between the inner sides of the seat stays on my Raven, at the point of the lower edge of the Zeppelins, i.e., net ~13mm total clearance. So, no problem in fitting a 58mm Honjo, or a 60mm VO or Gilles Berthoud stainless. If you fit a 26" fender, rather than a 650B, you might get a little more width clearance, as the 650 fender sits slightly higher above the tire, by about a cm.
* At the front, it's a slightly different picture: At the level of the lower edge of my 650B Zeppelin, I measure just 60 mm total clearance between the inner sides of my forks. This is reduced a little from what I'd expected by the presence of a lug. Maybe if you used 26" x 60 mm fenders, you'd have a little more clearance. I couldn't check that on my bike without removing the wheel. Maybe, however, you'd need to compress the edges of the fender slightly, to clear the forks, and/or add some tape mickeg suggests.
* If you used 650B fenders at the front, say 58 mm Honjos, you should have just enough clearance. A bit of protective tape would be useful, though.
1.3) Mounting the fenders: I didn't do this work -- my LBS assembled the fenders. I did, however, modify my front Zeppelin fender this past fall. I reduced the overall length by about 10 cms, and re-drilled the shortened fender, both to accept a different mudflap and to mount the fender stay higher up, and almost parallel to the ground. I found this adjustment easy to do, once I had managed to reconcile myself to cutting the fender. (Alloy is easy to work with, if you have a good range of good quality drills, files, and hacksaws.) As always, measure twice (or three times!), cut (or drill) once. Don't even think about doing such changes in situ.
Note: The VO fenders don't rub on the bottom edge of the Raven's head tube, because the fender bolts screw into the tapped hole in the bridge across the steerer, and the top of the fender is cushioned by a nice plump leather washer, part of VO's hardware. No need to tape the lower edge of the head tube, therefore. Good idea to inspect/oil/replace the leather washer occasionally, as it can dry out & does get compressed between the fender & the bridge across the steerer.
2) Lighting circuits: I use a SON28 hub dynamo, with circuits only to my headlight and Sinewave charger. At the rear, I use a couple of good quality removable battery-powered tail lights (Planet Bike & Portland Design Works), one on my seat bag and one on my rack. I charge the batts via my Sinewave charger.
* It's very useful to install connectors in your rear circuit, to allow removal of the fenders without also removing your wiring. I learned this when reassembling my daughter's bike this past year, after she had shipped it from Berlin. She has a Stevens touring bike with integral lighting, as German bikes do, and her Shimano circuit has a couple of very nice plastic M/F connectors. Both are outside the fender, one behind the seat tube & the other atop the fender behind the light itself. The wire is routed inside the fender.
* Following Dan's model, I used Deans connectors on the lower front circuit on my Raven. The SON28 has piggyback connectors at the hub tabs, which allow me to run 2 circuits, for the light & the charger. I installed Deans connectors just above the drip loop, about 10-12 cms from the hub tabs. There are two pairs of connectors, 1 pair in each circuit, each of which has 2 wires. The Deans connectors are quite easy to use -- both M and F plugs have a little ridge at the end which you can grab with your fingertips. The value of using the Deans (or other) connectors is that you can remove the wheel without having to constantly remove the wiring from the tabs on the hub. My experience is that, once the blade connectors are pushed onto the tabs, the whole lot is best left alone.
* My experience with this setup has been generally positive. I had to re-reach myself to do soldering. This meant buying a soldering kit. One of those is lot cheaper than the pro-quality crimping tool sold by Peter White. I have a crimping tool as well, but it's an inexpensive item I bought years ago from Canadian Tire, and it does not work very well for the finer crimping required by small-calibre bicycle wires.
* On the whole, my light-and-charging system has worked well over two seasons. I did encounter one problem this past season in my soldering, almost certainly a result of bad technique: one wire in the connections to my Deans connectors had gotten bent in the soldering process (too brittle, from too much heat? too tight a squeeze from the heat sink on the wire?) and eventually I had an intermittent break in the circuit. Luckily, the other circuit worked faultlessly, so I just switched the two circuits so that my light worked and my charger didn't. I didn't need the charger this year anyway--didn't have enough longer tours that required charging my batts, cellphone, or camera.
* This fall, as part of my year-end service on my Raven, I traced the fault, cut off the faulty wire/connector, and re-soldered the connection. Note: (i) I didn't re-use the connector. I had bought more than I needed when I first bought them. (ii) I had made the drip loop long enough to allow me to cut off a cm or two, to re-solder the connection. (This was pure dumb luck, not foresight.)
* I did find that one of the two piggyback connectors didn't work very well -- it was always a bit loose in its fit with the tab on my hub. I replaced it. That meant a crimping connection, but I added some solder to it. So far, the new one works fine.
* Also this past fall, I decided to fit connectors into the upper part of my front circuit, so that I could disconnect the charger and the headlight circuits if I ever needed to remove the front fork, without also removing the wiring from charger and light. These connections lie flat against the side of my head tube, above the fork crown, covered from view, sort of, by black electricians' tape which matches the matte-back finish of my bike. For these connections, I used the modified M/F blade connectors sold by Peter White as a regular SON fitment. These are crimped, not soldered -- I figured that, unlike the lower connectors near the drip loop, I wold not be using these very often, so they wouldn't be under the stress of regular removal. (Sinewave do sell inline tubular gold connectors, which are a bit less bulky, but they have to be soldered, with a small surface area for the connection, and I didn't trust my technique to make an effective joint. So, I used the flat blade connectors.)
I hope that's helpful, Dave. It's about the sum total of my knowledge on all this -- take it FWIW, but I'm happy to defer to the much greater experience of people like Dan and mickeg in these matters.
Cheers,
John
