Ass Savers Fendor Bendor

The Ass Savers Fendor Bendor started as a Kickstarter project from Gothenburg and has since grown into a cult icon in the road cycling community. The design is radically simple: a curved sheet of flexible plastic that wraps around your seat tube with two rubber straps. No bolts, no eyelets, no screwdriver — on or off in 20 seconds. For road cyclists and gravel riders counting every gram and running frames without eyelets, this is the answer. Protection surprises everyone who tries a Fendor Bendor for the first time. For a 45-gram fender that folds into a pocket, it covers an astonishing amount: your back stays largely dry through a standard Dutch rain shower on a 10 km commute, and even riding through deeper Randstad puddles keeps most of the water off your kit. The wide rear flare channels water downward instead of at the rider behind you — a point where it clearly outperforms the SKS S-Board on group rides. For training in the Netherlands during rain season (October to April, with 200+ wet days spread across the year) it is a game-changer: you can keep it permanently in a jersey pocket and only mount it when the sky turns grey.

Compared to rivals the Fendor Bendor is uniquely positioned. The SKS S-Board offers similar coverage but weighs three times as much and does not fold. The Crud RoadRacer Mk3 gives far more coverage but requires permanent installation and will not fit aero seat tubes. The Zefal Paragon clip-on is similar in concept but uses a less refined clamp. For riders who want a fender they carry without thinking — like a spare tube — the Fendor Bendor is the only real answer. The Scandinavian design with colour options (from pure black to bright pink patterns) turns it into a statement rather than an apology.

Honest about the weaknesses: the rubber mounting straps are the Achilles heel. After eighteen months to two seasons of daily use they lose elasticity and start to crack, especially if you clamp them in cold Dutch winters (-5°C) and unfold them again. Replacement straps are fortunately cheap and easy to source. In real downpours you also notice the flexible plastic is less rigid than an SKS Bluemels; the board wobbles in turbulent rear-wheel wakes and can flap a little through extreme puddles. And on off-road sections with real mud it is simply not enough — stick with the Topeak DeFender for that. For pure road riders and urban commuters, though, this is an almost perfect product for the price.