Mucky Nutz Gut Fender

Like Crud Products' venerable Crudcatcher, the Mucky Nutz Gut Fender is a down-tube guard that's intended to stop mud and dirty water spraying into your face when you ride off-road. It'll keep some of the spray off your upper body too, and will do so on road as well as off, but don't confuse this with a 'proper' mudguard. This isn't about staying pristinely clean; it's about keeping crap out of your face so you can see where you're going.

I used it on a mountain bike and on a Kinesis Tripster ATR, bikes I rode off-road and on. I suppose you could fit it to a road bike, and it'd be better than nothing on a bike that lacked the eyelets and clearance for full-length mudguards. The trouble is that the faster you go, the more you end up riding into spray that's been thrown off the front of the wheel, ahead of the fork crown. At slower speeds, like you get off-road, that doesn't happen so much.

I used the Gut Fender in conjunction with a Mucky Nutz Face Fender, a small guard that fits to the fork. (It cable ties to the fork brace and lower legs of a suspension fork, but I found that it fitted fine on the rigid fork of my Genesis Longitude too.) Between the two guards, I pretty much never got mud or water in my eyes, and it stopped my water bottle from getting covered in cack.

The Gut Fender is about the same size as a Crudcatcher: it's 395mm long and 120mm wide at its widest. It's a lot lighter: just 30g to the 80g of a Crudcatcher. That's because it's made not of thick plastic but lightweight polypropylene that feels like a piece of laminated cardboard. It doesn't need to be especially stiff as the down tube gives it a rigid spine. It's far from fragile, easily springing back into shape if it gets knocked.

The Gut Fender attaches to the down tube. A couple of circular pads protect your bike's paintwork. There are holes the right distance apart if your bike has bolt-on down tube mounts, or you can use either the Velcro straps provided or your own cable ties. Use cable ties. The Velcro straps have to be cut to length to keep things tidy, which makes it awkward to then switch the guard between bikes with widely differing down tube diameters. You get a more secure fit with cable ties too. The guard is harder to nick. And it's a quid cheaper if you buy the Gut Fender without the Velcro straps, so it's a no brainer.

Note that if your bike has bare cables running along the down tube, this guard will interfere with them, increasing friction.

Verdict

Very lightweight spray protection for your face and chest on your mountain bike or cyclocrosser