A Front Fender For Sightseer

Rockport, Tex

It was like a trip from here to the next campsite by way of Alaska. Installing a front fender on the Sightseer turned into a several hour adventure all of its own. First you need to get all nasty with mosquito repellent. That stuff just plain stinks to me, but it works.

A couple of rides in the past on the Sightseer reminded me that a front fender of my style would be a good thing to have on occasion. So the search was made and Campmor had a sale on a decent set of fenders. Of course they come in pairs, but of course the OFM only uses one. They came last week but had to wait until today for installation.

Sightseer was removed from the Truck and flipped over for the first fitting of the new fender.
Amazingly the front fender was tried out first instead of the rear fender on the wrong wheel as my history suggests would happen. This fitting showed several changes required to fit my style of riding.

The fender sticks out past the mounting point and annoys the front brake. Brakes should never be annoyed with you or they might get really cantankerous at the wrong time. The fender is too far from the tire. The fender also is way to far from the ground. That allows too much road slop to get up onto the drive train for my liking.

So all that was needed was a trimming of the fender at the top, relocate the riveted L bracket and trimming the fender supports. A very important part of this modification is when you remove the L bracket. It has to be put somewhere very safe and difficult to remember where you put it so you can spend over an hour hunting for it as the temperature climbs. It does not seem rational to get to do outside work unless it is at least 90. A little before eleven the L bracket was found safe and sound in the bottom of my tool box. It was resting peacefully while my frustration was hitting new highs with every degree the thermometer went up.


Ok ten thirty and hot enough in the shade of the tree that the L bracket was found and “normal” production could continue.

The “high speed rotary tool” was used with a cutting disk to grind the old rivets off the fender. It certainly is a handy tool even if it eats disks like they are free. New the same disk was used to cut off the front of the fender to get it the correct length for my preference.

After a couple of tries the L bracket was riveted back on the fender and ready for a trial mounting.

That finally went well and it was on to the lower supports. The “high speed rotary tool” was used to trim the supports to my chosen length. This allows for some adjustments of the tire to fender distance as experience may require. The supports are very hard steel and required two disks per support to trim the excess off the support.


After the nuts were all tightened to the specified torque the Sightseer is ready for puddles while riding.

Notice that my choice is to have the fender end very close to the ground. Most folks set it a lot higher because it looks better. It is agreed that it looks better but it does not stop near as much slop from getting on me and the drive train.

Now all that is needed is some cooler weather so the Sightseer can take me out to try to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.