Functional bikes. Not Porn not Anti

I have a set of Velo Orange 45mm mudguards that I never bothered fitting a flap to, as I found the toe covering was good enough.

Cheers! The VO's look very fancy (as does their price tag compared to the SKS), whereas the Longboards were boring, plastic-y and utilitarian. The Bleumels really are a long way (I'd say over 7") shorter up front. SKS look to have made the newer version called 'Bleumels style' even uglier too :-/

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Fuck me, that is rough.

I've been wondering the same, as every front mudguard I've had (GB, VO and Bluemels, which are indeed way too short) was slightly disappointing in terms of front coverage compared to longboards (which almost touch the ground).

Thankfully I've not had to replace my longboards yet, but if I were to do so on a reasonable budget (i.e. no Honjo), I'd probably go for Pelago mudguards with extra-long flaps (e.g. from Raw, if you're in the UK).
If the flaps turn out to be too floppy, it's easy enough to add a flat alu/stainless steel bracket on the inside to increase rigidity. The SKS flaps are fairly short compared to the ones I've bought from Ass Savers, which are themselves shorter than the long ones you can get from Raw, so, on paper, I think it's easy enough to reach coverage similar to longboards.

As a bonus, they'll look way better than longboards.

Berthoud come in a long and a short version.
Long is long.
Goes from well under the front rack to hit it when going down curbs too slow length at the bottom.

I bought 26" and 700c Berthoud, both the "long" version. The 700c were approximately the same length as my VO ones (I've unfortunately deleted the picture since), and the 26" were only slightly longer than Bluemels.
It's possible that Berthoud fucked up the order and gave me the short version both times, as I'm not 100% sure they were on top of their shipping game (one of the packages was missing all of the mounting hardware, which of course they provided at no extra cost afterwards), but if they didn't I wouldn't call their fenders "very long".

Some pictures below (the unmounted ones are the 26", the shitty picture in front of the arc de triomphe are the 700c with added SKS flaps). Not the best pictures to show off length, but still might give a clue.

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for reference, this is 'longboard-long'

That's a fair bit longer than my older style Bleumels and my VO to be fair! You could definitely make the difference up with a flap though which gives a bit more choice. I do quite often catch my front flap on curbs and stuff, I'd be a bit more worried about catching a rigid mudguard like that anyway.

Fun fact: the short and long version of Berthoud guards only differ in the above the wheel part of the front guard. Like you say, in case you run a front rack, the long guards are more suitable.

Obviously you can decide to rotate the front guard to your own desire, but since Berthoud guards come predrilled at the crown area, you’d have to cover that hole if you don’t intend to use it. Long story short: in most cases choosing long over short Berthoud guards won’t give you more coverage at the toes.

Long story short
Nice work!

Ah you're right. But there's undrilled ones available I think?
Looking at the two examples up thread my concept of long/dry toes might be different.
I consider this long:

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Might also be a bit cautious. The first time I rode with those guards I managed to find a rather steep singletrack downhill, something almost impossible here, and bent them.

I wouldn't want a metal fender any longer than that Berthoud, cover the rest of the required length with a flap.

I agree that this is long enough, and would be perfect with a flap. It's possible that Berthoud has some length inconsistencies across their range, as my 700c Berthoud was not as long.
Judging from my picture above, it reached the same point as yours, but with a flap. This was good enough for my feet, but didn't protect the BB and drivetrain as well as my longboard.

My longboard, for comparison (ignore the BDHU, it's an old picture). Looks like shit, works well. It's hard to see from the picture, but the bottom of the flap is less than 4 cm off the ground.

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Ahh Mudguard nerds, they make the world go around.

We even discuss this through PM, but I won't out my fellow neurotics...

This flap on a long 700c 60mm Berthoud is 5 cm from the floor. Not using the ready made hole for the daruma bolt though, but an L-bracket positioned very close to where the daruma would be. If you'd put a bracket on it that pointed backwards and used the existing hole for one of those bolts, the end would be even lower.

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Any reason to favour the L bracket over the (usually more discreet) under crown direct mount?
(Has a photo of the full bike been posted before? Looks great!)

The Bluemel Styles may be an acquired taste aesthetically but they are, imo, functionally far superior to the older ones. The stays clip into the guard so there’s no rivets to corrode out and the adjustment is via a small Allen wrench at the frame end instead of by 8mm spanner at the guard so one less tool to carry. Black stays and hardware is also pretty slick.

if only they were available with a longer front, I might consider to mount them and see if I can get over my initial judgment of the aesthetics.

only thing with (really) long front fender is: avoid all branches on the road, even if they are small. I was sent over the bars on the morning after a storm last summer because one got picked up by the wheel and stuck behind the forks... unfortunately did a half salto instead of a full one and now my collarbone is loose.

I’ve done the ‘flap trailing on the ground’ thing in the past but find these are just the right balance of mostly dry feet but not picking up every little branch and twig you ride over.

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Not really, I thought I wanted to have more of the length on the back and use the hole there is with the L bracket pointing back, but that turned out to be a bit too close to the ground this time, so I just flipped the bracket around.

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I remember trying to convince customers that this was fine but, the amount of folk who.had a genuine problem with that front guard and a healthy fear it would catch on things. We didn't sell many

I had a guard sit that low for a bit, it would catch on curbs coming off them. Could've been a bit worse than pic rel even, though.