You know, those things on European bikes that make them easier to ride in your work clothes… I got the three pictured above on eBay France, and my friend held them until our visit (merci encore Julien!).

We don’t have many chainguards here in the States, and getting them installed takes more than a little Yankee ingenuity.

If you’re lucky your bike will have tabs for a chainguard and installation is easy.

Often they’re attached with clamps (the Mistral clamps are particularly pretty) which seem the easiest approach, particularly if your bike had a clamp-on derailleur which left a ring of rust (like mine). A friend of mine has mounted the Velo Orange chaincase with clamps and blogged about the process. His required even more Yankee ingenuity because he rides a cargo bike.

I’m getting ready to work on mine this weekend. We’ll see if my plan to cannibalize an old SKS chainguard for its guts, and attach it to the winged Simplex chainguard pictured above, will work… I hope to develop a protocol because “La Perle” will be going on Mom’s bike (her name means “Pearl”), and the last one pictured will be on Dad’s bike. By the time I’m done I’ll be an expert at this! (Or I’ll give up in frustration).

Additional suggestions gratefully welcomed!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under chiccyclist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.