Rack and fender on one eyelet spacing issue I just had fenders mounted on my bike, but there is a minor issue. Here is the picture of the situation:



The two fender stays can be see going to the left of the image, and the rack stay is the middle of the image. Currently, the top fender stay and the rack hook where you clip bags onto are pretty much touching. This makes it very difficult to slide a clip onto the rack hook without a struggle.

I was wondering what the best thing to do is. My plan is to buy a longer bolt and add a washer or two to space apart the fender stay and rack stay.

The problem is that I am concerned about cantilevering the rack stay too far from the eyelet. Is that a real concern? (see here)

The solution could be to also switch the ordering so that the rack stay is closest to the eyelet. But I feel like the fender stay could still get in the way because it would have to curve back to the fender. Is that a worry? I want to buy the right length bolt without having to experiment too much.

edit: situation update

After taking a closer look, I realized that the top fender stay runs under the seat stay, so having the fender stay go in front of the rack stay is not an option. I see two ways forward now:


Use washers (with possibly a longer bolt) to space apart the rack and fender stays, even though the rack stay will be outside of the fender stays.
Move the fender stays to P-clamps mounted on the seat stays.




Final update (3-20): I ended up using the same screw, but I added an additional washer between the fender stays and the rack. The screw was long enough to still fully thread the eyelet. And yes I did increase leverage on the screw from the rack ever so slightly. But this was the simplest and easiest solution. The way the fender stay is angled, it's impossible to have the fender stay outside of the rack.
A longer bolt is indeed a risk because of the extra leverage. The second photo suggests that even a tiny bend back away from the rack will solve your problem - you only need 5mm or so.

If you're willing to bend the fender stay that is a much better solution. The simple, crude way is just to bend it on the bike. Simply hold the fender in place with one hand and push the stay in towards the wheel with the other. You'll probably need to move the fender out using the stay adjustment system to get it to sit straight on the wheel. Unless you need a really big gap (more than 10mm) this should work. You'll have a curved stay and it will look very DIY.

The more organised way that lets you deal with a fender with no adjustment is to pull the stay off the bike and bend it in specific places using a vice. That will let you put a matching set of bends on the other side of the bike so that the fender sits straight. You still need extra length available because the bends pull the fender in towards the wheel.

If you don't have the extra length available you will have to fall back to using a longer bolt. Try to keep the extra length to a minimum. I suggest using a button head bolt rather than a square head because that bolt head will wear a hole in your pannier.