DIY mud gaurd for my Cannondale Gemini

OK Derek, you may have noticed around here we like to share how we do our home made devices and this has to be the most professional looking yet, OK it's not a light but jeez it looks good, so anty up boy. How do you make it and where do you get the material from?

Stuart

First off the material's are relatively easy to get from any surfboard materials supplier in this case Dion chemicals in Brookvale the resin is normal surfboard resin (polyester) there are basically two types
1. laminating resin:used to lay up the cloth, it stays slightly tacky
2. filler resin which has wax and styrene added which gells hard and smooth with the wax rising to the surface to bring up dust particals to be sanded off.
The carbon fibre can also be purchased at Dions or FGI in Brookvale
For me it was easy as I have a small buisness repairing surfboards so all I needed was hanging around my glassing bay.
First off you need a good template or negative of the shape you want in my case I used a cheap K-mart plastic fender so I clamped it in a vice and started carefully with very sharp scissors (as it frays very easily) cutting the carbon into strips a little bigger than the template.
Mixing a couple of mls. of catalyst to about 250 mls. of laminate resin and wearing desposable latex gloves start working the resin into each layer of carbon I used about 10 then finnish it with a layer of 4 oz fiberglass cloth.
When the resin has gone off (geled) then mix some catalyst into the filler resin and give it a coat with a small 1" brush after about 15-20 min the mass will be hard but still relatively flexable so peal away the template and get a new sharp stanley knife and start trimming the sides away in small long slithers , this has to be done before it cures into its final hard state.
You need to ware gloves as it is still sticky , keep trimming untill you have the basic shape that will fit into where you want it on the frame checking that it does not foul suspension travel or other moving parts.
Measure where you need to drill the holes to attach to the frame drill then as the tacky feel has gone and it is starting to cure fine sand all the edges for any loose fibres blow the dust off and suspend it from one of the holes and give it a final coat of filler resin (use a little more catalyst to get a fast hard gel)
Fine sand it with wet - dry sand paper and then strap it on with three strong cable ties .
My next improvement is using an old bike lock mount(the thing you mount the cable to your bike to store it) to adapt as a mount in my case on the Cannondale to the bottom of the seat post to give more rigidity but at the moment it is a suprisingly snug fit as I trimmed it down with only a few mm gap and with the inner tubes I have on my swing arms acting as a buffer there is no noise or movement.
Phewww !!!!!
hope that answers your request Stuart.

Or if thats to daunting a project I may be talked into doing a custom job (depending on the bike geometry) for you for a small fee if I can find the time between my two jobs and three kids.
If you do want have a try and it works you better post up the pics for bragging rights, and with what seems like the drought breaking rains there is a lot more mud for you to clean off your bike coming to a trail near you.
Go on you know you want to give it a go "pimp your ride"
Dez_b

If you like them you should see my forks , I split the tubes in half down the middle to reduce weight and wrap then cable tie them on the forks and chainstay .As we do a lot of downhill shuttle stuff with four bikes on the rack which creates lots of friction between bikes = loss of paint so tubes=no scratches , cheaper than lizard skins and who doesn't have old tubes hanging around
HOW GOOD ARE CABLE TIES !!!!