So I lent my new scicon bike case to a friend and his derailleur got crushed in flight
Any packing tips ?
Many thx
Steve
I have a biknd jetpack which is a soft-ish shell case. I remove the derailleur every time I fly and leave it loose at the bottom of the bag - how did it get crushed, did he remove it from the frame?
So far this year mines done a shade under 20k miles - touch wood no problem, the bags done probably close to double that and I’ve not had any problems but have always removed the rear mech
I remove the derailleur and cover it with an old thick wool sock and then use a thin Velcro strap to secure it to frame so it doesn’t flop around. I also pack a spare hanger as added insurance.
no he left it on thinking he had done enough to protect it with clothes and some of those swim noodles
i was trying to avoid taking it off as i am mechanically backward
cheers
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Take it off (it’s one bolt), wrap it in some padding and tie it up so it’s inside the rear triangle.
Take it off (it’s one bolt), wrap it in some padding and tie it up so it’s inside the rear triangle.
This is what I did and was told to do by regular bike flyers, no issues here.
I just finished packing my bike in my PikaPackworks case. I remove the derailleur and wrap it and the hanger in bubble wrap. It sits in a protected hard foam slot as well. Never had a problem. For those who are afraid to remove it, at a minimum, shift the derailleur as far as it can go towards the center of the frame (largest cog on the cassette if the wheel were still on the bike).
Put a quick-link in the chain. Remove the chain and undo the derailleur bolt. Either wrap as mentioned or if running Di2 just disconnect and toss the RD in your tool kit.
Remove the rear der, put it in bubble wrap, put a plastic axel that comes with new bike frames in the rear dropouts. I have a Pika and I have never had any problems.
Always, always remove the rear derailleur from the frame. As others has said, I wrap it in some cloth and tape it to the chain stay so it doesn’t move around. The only time I didn’t remove it, I was lucky that I only got a bent hanger that could be aligned easily (lucky it was an alloy dropout on an alloy frame). If it had been on my P2 without the replaceable hanger it would have cost me a new frame.
I’ve removed it and not removed it
It’s a gamble brah
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Put a quick-link in the chain. Remove the chain and undo the derailleur bolt. Either wrap as mentioned or if running Di2 just disconnect and toss the RD in your tool kit.
Why disconnect the chain? Shift into the heaviest gear (slackens the cable), undo the bolt, and that’s it. Wrap it with the chain on it. I’ve been doing this a few times a month lately and didn’t have to adjust the shifting once.
So I lent my new scicon bike case to a friend and his derailleur got crushed in flight
Any packing tips ?
Many thx
Steve
In a general sense make you bag like a box. If you don’t have support in each of the planes then loads will be transferred to the contents of the bag. Having bubble wrap/ clothing etc is very good for absorbing energy (such as an impact situation) but if you have a 200kg load on your bag it isn’t doing much.
If you can, see if you can get a cardboard bike box into your bag and then the bike into this. This gives you the rigidity of a box and the bag will hopefully waterproof it. If not I cut sections of cardboard and insert them to take load vertically along the full length of the bag and more importantly to take load when the bag is on it’s side. Ideally this means weight will be transferred from the item on top of the bag through a series of cardboard struts to the item below with your bike suspended in the middle.
Iain
That’s exactly what I do, except the plastic axel part. I use locking, steel travel axels I bought many years ago.