Fender Trouble

[roadrunnertwice]

I realize I'm the only person who's going to find this picture funny, but since I went to the trouble of making it before that occurred to me, it's going on up.

I decided this was the year I was finally going to bother equipping my bike with fenders, and immediately ran into a brick wall. >:[

See, Brigadelle (my epic mount) is a late '80s Schwinn road bike, and it does not have a whole lot of clearance. And I kind of maxed out what clearance IS there by equipping it with a pair of Schwalbe Marathons. (I haven't had a flat since the previous Panaracers gave up the ghost, BTW, so I can't regret that.) And also the frame is only like 49cm, which means we're basically operating at the frozen limit of what you can get away with putting a 27" wheel on. (In fact, we're probably past it, but I don't think anyone making bikes in the '80s had yet realized that shrinking the front wheel was a viable approach.)

This is what we're dealing with, basically:







I've only poked at one shop's supply so far, and what I learned is that full fenders are just plain out of the question, the fattitude of the Schwalbes rules out the more common size of those Planet Bike halfsies that attach to the fork blades with zipties, and even if I can get ahold of the wider "hybrid" size of halfsies, the minuscule distance between the tire and the down tube will make it a challenge anyway.

Has anyone come up with any brilliant fender solutions for smaller bikes with clearance issues? Any brands that you've found work better than others? It seems like this might require some creativity.