There's lots of suspension-corrected forks out there, which is great, 'cause it makes a mountain bicycle versatile. There's one stinker of a problem, however: fender mounting. The extra fork clearance causes fork crown mounted front fenders to sit way up above the tire, rendering them less effective than they should be, and really unattractive (one always desires a consistent radius, doesn't one?).

Yuk. 

There are two common hacks we've used to address this problem: cutting a bit of a fender stay to essentially extend the fender's mounting bracket, OR using a disc brake adapter to provide a secondary mounting point. Neither of these solutions is particularly simple or attractive, so we manufactured this thing and decided to call it the Fender Flute.

The Fender Flute, on Mark's Desk

It's a 100mm long piece of black anodized alloy with M6 holes tapped at 10mm intervals. You attach the fender tab to its backside: 

Then find the sweet spot and attach it to the fork crown via corresponding threaded hole:

The fender tab has adjustability for fine tuning, and there you've got yourself a more effective fender with a much nicer-looking radius: 

Nice (but be sure to cut those fender struts). 

Now available from our big momma QBP. Talk to your local bicycle retailer.  

The recent random obsession in my basement has been disc brake adapters. I've got about a dozen of these I've accumulated over the years and no braksets that need these particular varieties, so I've been searching for re-uses. They do have some features that piqued my interest: they're threaded for M6 bolts (pretty common to find in the junk drawer), and the threads are perpendicular to each other, rare for bike-related hardware. I used one as an extension/mount for a front rack, and last week found another sweet repurpose: 

There's the disc brake adapter, one of our QR nut light mounts, and a double-ended stud (I'll explain later). 

The vice was occupado, so I screwed the adapter into the bench to cut one end off. 

It's pretty quick to get through the alloy with a hacksaw. Then I tried to get fancy with the bench grinder. I used a black Sharpie to cover up the silver...

The disc brake adapter threads right onto most fender mounting bolts, since they're threaded for M6 nuts. Still a fair amount of clearance for the brake arms.

The double-ended stud. I've encountered a handful of these in my day, and they've always come in handy. I decided to get some made for Problem Solvers, thinking that they might be something our kinfolk may be interested in. This particular stud is M5 threaded on one side and M6 threaded on the other.

The M6 side goes into the modified disc brake adapter...

The M5 side goes into our QR nut light mount, much like this previous post...

Then the headlight attaches to the light mount. Pretty slick, huh? It would work just as easily on a rear rack with a taillight. I have to be a little careful because the heavy end of the light may cause the mount to twist loose, but it's been great through a couple night rides so far. The real question I have is what other potential uses there might be for these double-ended studs? It would seem there are myriad possibilities...