Packing my bike for the first time to fly. My surly down under racks fit pretty well as a brace. If I zip tied it to the bike horizontally like this, am I setting myself up for disaster?
by jkev13
Packing my bike for the first time to fly. My surly down under racks fit pretty well as a brace. If I zip tied it to the bike horizontally like this, am I setting myself up for disaster?
by jkev13
8 Comments
Personally I don’t know, but I wonder if the metal might pop out through the cardboard.
I think it’s fine, I might do the same. Note – I am not a structural engineer or even very smart.
It would only make sense on the fork side of the bike…your rear rack will prevent that side of the box from collapsing anyhow.
After 4 seperate flights and boxes last month I found that the baggage handling is pretty okay.
I did make sure that i had my front caliper away from the walls of the box and my rear de railer protected with a bag of clothing.
i’ve certainly done worse and it’s been fine.
I achieve the same by cutting long strips of cardboard to the width of the gap, rolling them up into small batons and then taping them throughout. You’ll be surprised how it only takes 4 or 5 of them to make the box completely rigid. If you roll them tight and then tape them into the baton shape they’re pretty much incompressible
My rear rack broke at one of its joints from compression during travel. The problem was that I placed my helmet in the box on top of my rack and the helmet’s top was taking some of the force from packages on top, or if the box was upside down.
What’s worse was that I didn’t realize the rack was broken until about 5 miles from our start when it fell apart. Must have been micro fractures until I stressed the rack with panniers and travel. Thankfully I headed to a close by bike shop and bought a new rack.
The lesson learned? Don’t use a rack to brace your bicycle during travel. They’re not that strong.
Personally, I wouldn’t risk it.
I’ve not got to the point where I’ve taken a bike on a plane, but I have taken several wheelchairs and Strollers (most boxed after the first incidents) and enough have been broken in the hold for me to just never trust doing something like this.
I would pack it flat, and stuff every available gap with bubble wrap or clothes – you want something soft to absorb the bumps and knocks, anything hard that takes the hit will take damage even if you don’t see it now. The worst is when a screw breaks inside the shaft of whatever it screws into – you won’t see it or know it’s there until it fails catastrophically.
I pretty much just zip tied my wheels to the frame and threw it in a box with no extra padding a few times, and it was fine. Touring bikes are tough lol. I wouldn’t overthink it.