Widget Components Mudguards Blades Set

These reflective blades-style mudguards will fit to most road bikes and do a reasonable job of keeping the road spray off you. The reflectivity is a nice touch and they're pretty simple to fit too. Your feet and gears won't get a lot of protection, though.

We tested the longer version of these mudguards a while back and praised the sturdy construction, but found fitting a bit of a pain. That's not the case here. Fitting them to a rim-braked Cannondale Synapse proved pretty simple, taking an unrushed half an hour the first time, and massively less than that for subsequent reattachment.

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'Blades', in mudguard terminology, has generally meant a shorter clip-on style of mudguard rather than the traditional longer version. Competitor products from the likes of SKS and Crud have been pretty popular with riders wanting to use fast bikes in the winter months. These are a fairly similar product to the shortest version of SKS's Raceblades, adding in a visibility-enhancing sprayed on reflective layer to the outside, and some differences in the mounting hardware.

The latest version of the SKS Raceblades features small screws to allow for radial and angular adjustment to the stays. With the Widget blades, you can adjust the length of the stays with a screw-down collar at the outer end, while angular adjustment is a question of bending the stays as needed. The outer ends of the stays are attached to the mudguards with small screw-down gripper devices, allowing you to choose where they attach. To be honest, I don't think there's much in it, in terms of ease and flexibility of installation.

Attachment to the bike is very similar between the two brands, with rubberized blocks which are strapped to the fork and seatstays with stretchy straps. However, here, the attachment is rather lower down, only a couple of inches above the axle at the rear, in fact. If you had disc brakes with the caliper mounted above the seat stay (rather than inside the rear triangle as is more commonly the case now) then you might need to do some bending to allow the mudguards to attach above it, but I would think that this wouldn't be too challenging. There are some helpfully detailed instructions on fitting on the Widget website.

The advantage of blades is that they'll fit bikes without mounting bosses and there is no faffing around getting them to fit under your brake calipers, although at the obvious price of less complete protection from road spray. Here I found that feet, brakes, drivetrain and friends were the main victims, although they certainly trap a lot of what would otherwise paint your back and face.

As there is no stabilising attachment to the brake bridge or fork, blades-style mudguards can be a bit bouncy. The trick seems to be to fit them so their typical range of bouncing movement doesn't allow them to come into contact with anything (for example brake calipers) and then it isn't really a problem. I found it wasn't difficult to fit them in a way that they didn't rub or bang into anything. Occasionally you might bend or displace one, by leaning the bike against something or putting it in a car, but this was a simple matter to rectify and never caused any damage.

Widget says that these will fit 20-28mm tyres (who's using 20mm tyres in conditions where they need mudguards?!) and they worked fine with 25mm and 28mm tyres during testing. The whole outer surface is painted with Scotchlight "black" reflective paint, which is a major boon to your night-time visibility under car headlights, while still looking pretty smart in the daylight. I felt that in urban commuting conditions this reflective finish was a big benefit. The testing period wasn't enough to verify the long-term durability of this paint, so I can't confirm how well it'll cope with prolonged winter grot and jetwash ministrations.

The truth is that these blades are probably mostly aimed at riders who want moderate protection for the occasional time they have to ride in a shower over the colder months. If you're a hardcore year-round commuter, your bike was probably chosen to have proper mudguard mounts, allowing you to mount full-length 'guards. Once set up, these are much faster to fit and remove than full mudguards, and that will be what appeals to the typical buyer, I think.

Should you buy them, then? Well, the reflectivity and RRP at a fiver less than the SKS alternative are certainly two marks in their favour, as is the fact that they'll easily accommodate 28mm tyres. If your bike won't take full-length guards, then then these are a simple-to-fit option which offers reasonable but certainly not complete protection from water and dirt. I didn't like the fact that my brakes and drivetrain were exposed to spray, and for this reason, I'd probably be more likely to look at alternatives like the Crud Roadracer for bikes where I couldn't fit 'proper' mudguards.

Verdict

Simple to fit mudguards that help you be seen; offer only moderate protection from spray