Packing and Traveling With Your Bike: Part 2 of 2

See Part 1 here.

Here are the step-by-step instructions.
This will take you at least an hour and a half if you've never done it before and an hour at the minimum if you've done it before.


Prepping the bike:
Put the bike in the workstand.
Remove the pedals and put them into a zip-lock bag. Make sure to include any pedal washers (ie: SRAM and FSA cranks).
Shift into the smallest chainring and smallest cog. Remove the chain and put it into a zip-lock bag The masterlink should go into its own small zip-lock bag.
Remove the rear derailleur and put it into a small padded bag.
Cut the cables and remove them. Take the loose housing off the frame and make sure to note which piece goes where.
Unbolt the handlebar and remove it from the stem. It is best to have a mark on both the stem and the handlebar to be able to align them again when the bike is being put back together. Wrap the handlebar well using bubble wrap.
Put the faceplate back onto the stem. Loosen the pinch bolts on the stem and rotate it so that the stem is right above the top tube in the box. Make sure that the stem does not contact the top tube. You may have to flip the stem.


Prepping and packing the wheels:
Remove the wheels from the bike. The cargo holds on airplanes are pressurized so, contrary to popular belief, nothing will explode if you leave your tires at normal pressure, but I find that being able to compress the tires helps to get the wheels into the case in certain circumstances.
If you have a 29er and a standard hard case, you will have to completely deflate your tires to be able to get them to fit. It is your call whether or not to remove the sealant from the tires prior to shipping. If you have confidence that your tires will remain seated on the rim, you can leave the sealant (as I do with my Stans wheels and sealant). You do NOT want the mess of it leaking out.
Take the skewers out of the wheels and set them aside. If your mountainbike has a thru-axle, it is best to put them back into the fork and/or frame.
If you have a mountain bike, remove the brake rotors, wrap them in clean paper and place them into a zip-lock bag. The rotor bolts can go into a separate little bag or back into the hubs.
Put the plastic shipping end-caps into the wheel axles.
This is when you should also put blocks into the disc brake calipers to prevent the pistons from being activated during shipping.
It is also a good idea to let the air out of and to fully compress the fork on your mountainbike for ease of packing (if you have a 29er, this is a necessary step in order for the bike to fit) and also to prevent damage to the fork stanchions.


Packing the frameset:
Wrap the frame tubes in sheets of bubble wrap work great for this and if you want extra insurance, you can even wrap over the bubble wrap with sections of old inner tubes cut in half lengthwise.
Take the bike out of the stand, remove the seatpost/seat from the frame and wrap them.
Place the bike facing crankset-down in the case on top of the first sheet of foam.
Lay the handlebar between the top tube and downtube. There is no optimal positioning because of the shape of road bars so find whatever works best for you. I have included a photo of one option.


Packing the accessory box:
At this point, the bike has been separated into three sections: the frameset, the wheels, and the contents of the accessory box. Make sure everything that is to go into the accessory box is accounted for and put away: the brake rotors, skewers, rear derailleur, chain pedals, and the new cables which you will install or have installed at your destination. It is also a good idea to take a roll of electrical tape and extra zip-ties.
I also usually include an extra roll of bar tape, brake pads, lube, my digital tire pressure gauge, shock pump, a small Zippo tape measure, and my multi tool and flat repair kit in this box. Yes, it all fits.
The accessory box goes between the stays. It is best to zip-tie the seat/seatpost combo to the top tube or seat tube near where the handlebars are. Once again, optimal placement will differ.
Now any extra items can be included, such as shoes or a travel pump. These shouldn't have to be wrapped thoroughly because hopefully everything they could possibly contact inside the case is already packed well.


Finishing:

The second sheet of foam goes next, on top of which go the wheels. The wheels will overlap in the middle. The best way is to put the front wheel in first, and then the rear wheel with the cassette facing up. This way the cassette cannot damage anything in the box.
The loose bits of housing (if you're planning on re-using them) can go with the wheels. Make sure to secure the ferrules on the ends if this is the case.
Then follows the third layer of foam and then the lid. You're done!

A nice side-effect of having a bunch of relatively heavy parts of the bike packaged together in the accessory box is if the gate agent starts to gripe about the weight of your bike box, you can easily knock a kilo or so off the weight by removing the box from the travel case and putting it into your other checked bag.

Feel free to send me any questions you may have. Happy travels and good racing!

-Dávid

Packing and Traveling With Your Bike: Part 1 of 2

Introduction:

Traveling by air with your bike can be a fairly annoying thing. It isn't enough that you already have to worry about jet-lag and racing in an unfamiliar place but also you have to worry about potential damage caused to your bike during travel.

If you're a mega-pro, you have mechanics to worry about this for you and all you have to do is ride.
If you're an amateur or some sort of low-rent Elite racer, you have to do all this yourself. Do a good job and you'll have one less thing to be anxious about and go back to thinking about what's important: your performance.

If you pack your bike in an ad-hoc manner and in a rush, it will be damaged. I see a lot of people doing a bad job packing their bikes and it's because they don't even know where to start. My goal in writing this and making it public is to illustrate my method, which gets used a lot. In addition to the numerous bikes I've packed for other people, I've packed my own and my brother's bikes dozens of times for travel to Europe and to the West Coast with no damage.

It is important to understand that damage to a bike inside its travel case is most frequently caused not by external forces but rather by the various parts of the bike shifting and making contact inside the case.
The two types of damage that can occur are abrasions damage and impact damage. It is important that the parts move as little as possible inside the case and that the parts that are in contact are well-protected.
It is best to take the bike apart as much as possible for transport.
One detail which really helps in this is to remove components such as rear derailleurs, chains, pedals, and the brake rotors off mountainbikes and pack them together in an accessory box inside the travel case. Bike manufacturers do this to be able to pack bikes more efficiently and to prevent damage when the bike is shipped from the factory to the distributor to the bike shop, and so should you when you travel with your bike.
Another good idea is to cut the cables completely and install new ones at your destination. Cables don't cost much and not having your handlebar attached to the rest of the bike via cables is a great help in trying to Tetris your machine into a travel case.

It is important to have a clean bike to start with. Packing a dirty bike sucks, but not as much as unpacking and re-building a dirty bike. Do yourself a favor and clean the bike before you leave. The chain should then get a very very light coating of lube; just enough to thwart corrosion.
Everyone does a better job packing the bike on the outbound leg than on the inbound leg. This is to be expected. After your event, you'll be tired and anxious to get the bike packed and get on the plane to go home. Don't rush and don't get sloppy because you will not be pleased with the results.

Part 2 here.