I finally received my bike back from Miami on Friday. Fed Ex had actually came on Thursday, but I was at work so I had to work from home in order to sign for it. The whole bike shipping process turned out to be more expensive than I originally anticipated, so in order to save $50 more I am unpacking and reassembling by bike myself. This may not seem like a big deal, but my confidence in bike maintenance is very low. I usually end up making things worse instead of better.
Unpacking the bike from the box revealed they had done a pretty nice job of packing and protecting everything. I also noticed that everything they had removed or disconnected were things that were easily removed. The bike probably could have fit into a smaller box which may have saved a few dollars too. I wanted to highlight everything here in case I ever need to do this again(when shipping rates drop by 75% maybe? Ha!).
The following items were removed for packing:
- Seat and seat post – tape post to mark seat position. X-Lab bottle holder remains.
- Pedals – stored in a small box
- Handlebars removed from stem. Were not marked for proper position, but I looked at some pictures and estimated from them.
- Stem was loose in headset – Not sure why this was loosened as I didn’t see much point to it. Tighten(not too hard) top headset bolt then evenly tighten the bolts wrapping stem to headset.
- Front wheel and skewer – Skewer stored in small box. Plastic cover protected the hole where the skewer goes through on the wheel. There was another plastic piece that goes over the slots where skewer slides in the forks. I saved these pieces in case I need them in the future.
I was easily able to put everything back together. The only thing I had issues with was determining which stem/headset bolts to tight first. I checked YouTube and found a couple videos on that. I took the bike out for a hour and a half ride and everything seemed good. Learn something new every day!
