Fenders: What's going on here?
 

Fenders. You gotta love them if you live anywhere North and Berlin, Germany is north and is rainy.

So my Commuter/Brevet bike (the wonderful Elephant NFE) has the Sim Works (Honjo) 62mm Fenders. They wrap around the Schwalbe G-One Speed (50mm which does not blow up to 50mm on Velocity Aileron 650b) pretty nicely and go pretty deep.

Yet, my dive train gets splashed like there are no fenders. My commute shoes come out super wet and as you can see in the pictures, everything is super muddy and dirty.

The question to the revered forum pals: Am I doing something wrong? Is this "to be expected"? Anything that I can do to help the situation?

Thanks and happy holidays!

Pretty much to be expected.

You can attach a leather mud flap to the bottom screws on your fender. That will cut down the tire spray even more.

You better hope the rain in southern England does head your way or water will be over the bottom bracket on your rides.

Keep in mind fenders reduce spray, dirt, and salt...yet does not eliminate it.
You could explore longer/wider fenders coupled with a front flap.
It might also be that the fenders you have installed are doing their best...

It's worse without fenders.

That's all..

SPP

Is your glass half empty or half full?

As has been said; fenders aren't perfect, but go without them for a ride and see the difference.

It's possible a smaller width tire will hide within the confines of the fender better and result in less overspray.

The mudflaps were a good suggestion as well.

In addition to the other comments about adding a front flap, and adjusting your expectations, I will add that those large volume tires sling a lot of merde. That is a lot of surface area for water, mud, rocks to attach, and they will broadcast all of that media with every revolution. Imagine what you and your bicycle would look like without the fenders.

plus, some tires kick up more crap than others

I have a close friend that commutes all year. He added an additional mud flap to both front and back fenders. He also went so far as to add a flap in the chain stay/seatpost area to reduce spray to the bb/crankset area.

As others have said-front mudflap. I think it's design-dependent. I've used stiff ones that sort of continue the contour you have going. They can act as a ramp for the water, further deflecting upward. Still better than no mud flap, though they also kick up twigs and trail debris. Ideally I think it needs to have a bit of flex in order to hang a bit more vertical. Other than that, what you have going is about as good as you can expect with tires that wide. In fact it looks pretty good to me. I'm not seeing "super muddy and dirty", just a bit on the rims and fenders.

The front mudflap is astonishingly effective.

you could get a flap for the front, and one for the back (so you don't splash your buddies).

Fenders are fine, they help a bit but far from the magical holy thing that some people make them out to be (hello bicycle quarterly). To me the best thing is the drivetrain is indeed cleaner and might let you wait a few rides btw bike cleans. As far as getting wet, meh, you still wet, feet are soaked because a lot of times the fender just sends a nice large stream of water straight into your foot.

They are great if the road is a bit wet but once its soaked, I could go without them like 95% of the time. But I do like an ass saver or better, the SKS strap fender so that your back stays dry and mud free.


Also, that drive train looks pretty clean to me for after ridding rain and dirt

I resolved a similar issue on my commuter (Black Mountain Monstercross) by dropping down from the Marathon Supremes I was running (2.0 inches wide) to a 'more reasonable' 28mm tire. Greatly reduced the amount of water and debris thrown by the tires, which allowed the fenders to do their job much better.

I can’t quite tell from the photos, but dropping the fenders a bit closer to the tire will reduce the mess. I had Honjos on my commuter that were very tight fitting and effective. I removed and switched to SKS ones with much more room and I seem to be getting wetter now.

Not necessarily. Honjos work much better than SKS, because they have a folded lip at the edge that keeps the water inside.

As for OP's issue, 62mm wide fenders are rather marginal for 50mm tires. Also, mudflaps would help.

Perhaps try these or a homemade version, but your front fender does appear to come down pretty low. As others have said, mudflaps aren't perfect, but the alternative is much worse.

http://buddyflaps.com/product/skeleton