In this video I break down exactly how I pack my aero road bicycle into the Scicon Aerocomfort 3.0 without taking my handlebars off for a flight all the way to the other side of the world for a cycling event. I offer up a few of my favorite tips and show you exactly how I protect my carbon road bicycle frame from being damaged by the airlines.
This bag has been a game changer for me and allowed me to race stage races in other states and transport my bike to events I’d have otherwise had to rent a bike at. There’s nothing quite like it on the market and when I purchased it the price was right.
Make sure you protect your bike properly. I chose the Orucase Frame Protection Kit because I didn’t want to risk a $7,000 bike being cracked or completely destroyed at the will of TSA.
The Scicon Aerocomfort 3.0 flew for free on Air Canada and no overweight fees or any issues popped up getting it through customs, etc.
The bike arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark with zero damage and was in perfect condition thanks to the Aerocomfort 3.0 and the Orucase Frame Protection Kit.
I hope this helps you pack your bike bag for your next flight.
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Frame Protection Kit
ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the channel for those of you that are new here my name is Dalton I ride in race bikes and I bring that all to you right here on YouTube today we’re going to look at how I pack this bike into this scyon aeroc Comfort 3.0 now before a couple months ago I had never actually fown a bike before so this was a new experience for me that’s kind of why I didn’t do the breakdown immediately and instead I just did an unboxing video for you guys now fast forward a couple months later I have actually packed this thing into this bag successfully and it made it both to Seattle and home tomorrow a new test though we’re flying across the pond we’re headed out to Copenhagen Denmark for the pwn normal Studios Global brand Summit I’m extremely excited about this but that means we need to break down this bike and get it loaded up and ready to go so that I can throw it on the plane and hopefully it will arrive safely in Denmark now to make sure that happens I have a few special tips for you guys so make sure to stay tuned watch the whole video first thing is first though we have to get the bike prepped and ready to go inside the bag you will need a couple tools to start I have a six for my through axles that’s an allen key and I have an eight for my pedals because you don’t want to fly your pedals in your bike bag for a variety of reasons they are one of the things that you cannot really replace when you land in your destination so make sure to pull the pedals off they also have uh lithium ion batteries in them I believe especially the power meter pedals that I have so you want those to fly with you and they’re made it up to your shoes and cleats which also need to fly with you in the event you have to rent a bike when you arrive because of lost luggage or something like that the other item I like to bring just a quick one uh brake blocks so I have spram hydraulic brakes on my bike and when you’re running those it’s really easy for the levers to get bumped around by TSA and the like or yourself while you’re transporting your bike back and forth so you want to make sure that you bring along a couple brake blocks because your wheels and your rotors will not be inserted in the caliper while traveling keep that in mind if you have these bring some brake blocks quick note there are a couple other items that you’re also going to want to carry with you like your batteries if you’re running sham if you’re running Shimano I don’t know about di2 but sham specifically you want to pull your batteries off and bring those with you you should have something that looks a little bit like this this is the block that goes on the back of the derailer and you clip it in and it mates up to your derailer just like a battery would but your batteries are actually in your backpack with you on the plane okay back to the [Music] pedals of course everything on my bike is a little bit greasy so you might get kind of messy in the process it might be worth grabbing a rag pedals are taken care of let’s go ahead and pull our batteries off like I said quick tip store your battery blocks and your brake bleed blocks or whatever in your travel bag that way you you know exactly where they are when it comes time to pack it [Music] up I have CO2 canisters in here so I don’t want this to fly with me I don’t know if you’re supposed to fly CO2 canisters so I typically just leave them at home and just pick some up at the bike shop when I get there pull the trusty Dusty computer off because this is also a rechargeable lithium ion battery and I want this with me just in case funny enough for this particular bag this is kind of all you have to do not exactly because you do have to pull the wheels off but we’ll get to pulling the wheels off when we actually start packing the bag not really the bike tear down part this is where you’re going to need the six for your through axles well I don’t know unless you have like some other type of through axle but yeah minor 6 mil first you want to lay this thing out completely butterflied wide open in in here I have the gear bag this has some extra parts and things I’m actually going to fill this up this go round with a lot of extra kit and other things that I want to put in here that I don’t necessarily need in my actual carry-on bag with me I’m going to offer you guys the realest hack of all of them you do see these bags packed perfectly sometimes your bike will still arrive I’ve seen it time and time again there’s damage to your frame set luckily the boys over at Ora case hooked me up with a frame protection kit I use this on the way to Seattle it’s very clearly labeled there is your crank protection you’ve got protection for your top tube you can cut all these to length to fit your specific bike you’ve got the protection for your fork they really do the hold dang thing this gave me a lot of Peace of Mind when it came to TSA throwing around my bag when it arrived back in San Diego after the Seattle trip for example it was just thrown on the oversized baggage Rack or whatever it is the baggage claim it it didn’t look like it had been treated with care so this kind of just gives me extra peace of mind I know the scyon comes with like a little bit of frame protection but when you compare the two things let’s look at it real quick so when you compare just like some foam that’s the top tube protection that comes with the scyon with like actual high density foam that has some impact resistance to it they’re just two different things um what I did do on the top tube which I think is probably recommended is I put this foam cyclon frame protection underneath the Oro case top Tu protection and that seemed to work really really well I’m just like over the top about how how much frame protection I put on these bikes I don’t have whatever $7,000 to spend every time I fly so you know try and keep things in check it just saves you the fight with the airline okay back to the thing if you guys want to see like the bag details and stuff check out my previous video uh where I did the unboxing cuz I talked about a few of the details I got a little more closeup in some instances but yeah this video is not that this video is meant to like show you guys kind of the steps behind packing it up now for the fun part the thing I learned early on when I packed this the first time is that you’re going to want to mount your front fork in here first because the mechanism inside is it slides back and forth to the length of your bike so it’s a lot easier to start with your front fork already attached and then take your rear wheel off it just makes things easier to adjust and maneuver and get in here properly so we’re going to do that first we’re going to pull off the front wheel pop in a brake block like I said you don’t want have to bleed your brakes or mess with your pistons when you get there and then we’ll put it in here and I’ll show you guys how to do the back after that uh keep track of where you put your through axle and your Allen key because last time I did this I set it somewhere stupid I put like the black through axle on a black something and I couldn’t find it for like 15 minutes really just pissed me off and I went rage mode and that was a nightmare I ended up Shak taking the bag unpacking my bike and it finally fell out of somewhere who knows where and I found it so yeah keep track of your stuff just so you guys can see what a closeup of this looks like with the brake Block in there Pops in nicely and it attaches right there move that out of the way and we are going to put the wheel back here and seat the front fork onto the frame that’s inside of the bag all right front fork seated onto the frame inside the bag ready to go now I’m going to go ahead slot that through axle in there and then the front will be secured you want to make sure that you keep your outside your drive side crank forward and then your non- drive side crank back with the uh chain stays it’s just like a little bit added protection there with like two things right together anyway all right um through axle in the front nice and tight there we go I can wheel it around luckily because I have my rear wheel supported back there on the bag as I mentioned rear wheel is going to attach here and you’re going to slide the through axle through back here on this frame obviously the chain is going to need to be routed around this black piece right there that’s what that’s for really simple construction but yeah you do have to remove your rear wheel so it’s time to move forward pull the rear wheel off and I’ll show you guys what to do with the wheels after that all right rearr axle is out like I said pay attention to where you put it drop it out of [Music] here chain is going to come over the top of this the big thing is as you can see I’m way behind where the through axle needs to go into that’s key here because I actually need to move my bike itself Way Way Forward in order to accommodate so I’m sliding It Forward all right got that now there is a spacer missing here where’s that at all right now for standard space you’re going to need the spacer I don’t know if you can see that it comes with the sheon though so you do need the spacer on here I apparently lost that at some point in the shuffle of things but yeah the spacers are included in the gear bag when you get it make sure that’s on there otherwise you’ll have a ton of gap between your chain stays like the rear dropouts here and the actual um mount for the through axle inside the bag make sure the spacer’s on there otherwise you’ll have a lot of flexion in your rear and you don’t want flexion in the rear all right once you get everything lined up taada through axle I remembered where it was slide this in now this part is like it’s a little wonky man just to be honest like my thr axle never align perfectly got to do some derailer adjusting moving around all right [Music] nice and tight through axle good this is in all set now we don’t want to forget we need to put the brake Block in the back here same thing I don’t want to have to bleed my brakes or push my Pistons back in when we get to a hotel it’s kind of the whole point in leaving your handlebars in in the first place if you do have to force your pads and pistons out a little bit it’s really not a big deal cuz you can come back to it later quick bubbly break not sponsored almost there but like I said before we have to do some frame protecting this is for derailer protection cuz you know TSA they really really care about your stuff right cool and you can just strap over the top here bam one down rear exposed carbon areas exposed piece of this thing double this baby up down tube it’s not not the easiest thing in the world but like I said a million times before in this video protect your bike little saddle protection here it’s not really protection but what it does have on it are these little pockets or I guess not Pockets but Loops so that when you strap your bike inside this bag it’s stable so buckle that up really easy mechanism there tighten this down clip one side of your handlebars tighten that bad boy down Bo other side up and I’m not actually going to rench this down super tight just yet because I’m going to put my wheels in the sides all right here’s the bike almost packed obviously we still have to put the wheels in I’m going to show you guys what I’m going to do with that but we have the handlebar pads like I said strapped down that keeps things tight here handlebar pads on this side we have top tube protection with the foam underneath that’s from Shon syon however you want to say it I don’t know dude uh down tube right here protected with some oral case stuff I’ve got the chain stays protected the saddle has these loops on top that I talked about before and then you tighten this down it keeps that all nice and tight and then down there I do have the crank protection on there and that’s looped with like a little velcro piece there too all right wheel stop important one thing I do do do let a little bit of pressure out of your tires not enough that they’re going to pop off the bead but air pressure is different at altitude ah so we’re going to get into what I’m going to do to protect my rotors now this is something that a lot of you guys maybe haven’t thought about but this would be a good opportunity if you were to pack this all by itself for the rotors to get jacked up bent everything else and have more brake troubles than what you were anticipating luckily Oro case once again makes a rotor protection kit and this comes with essentially a mock through axle that you will marry up with the rotor protector so we’re going to move forward there’s two different length through axles the shorter one obviously goes for your front here self-supported rotor taken care of so both wheels are in the frame is super protected everything is buttoned up how I’m comfortable with it you can now take this strap and tighten things up once you pull it up here just pull a little tighter here tuck it over your hoods the biggest thing that might still be exposed here it’s kind of your hoods just in all reality and your levers so at least those are pretty replaceable versus a new frame set it’s really about just protecting the major parts here here give her a zip up and over the saddle and I have a pretty high saddle height and this works for me so my guess is y’all shouldn’t have to drop your Saddles at all now if you have a TSA lock you can slap it on your zipper here I personally have thrown an air tag in the exterior of the bag and I keep it zipped in here that way I can track exactly where this thing is at at all times all right guys that is pretty much the gist of how you set this thing up like I said air tag in here flight tag goes here everything’s buttoned up nicely you can put your TSA lock on here make sure it’s a TSA lock otherwise it’ll get cut off but that’s essentially how you’re going to pack your bike into the cyon 3.0 my big thing is not packing anything that you’re going to need immediately or that you can’t replace if the airline loses this for 3 days at a time and has to ship it out to you uh that’s my best advice it’s super sturdy it flies well hopefully it makes it to Europe no problem I think it will it made it to Seattle no problem I’m going to throw a few more things in here to be completely transparent I’m going to pack the gear bag full of some kit and things like that other than that though we’re ready to rock if you like this video smash a like button for me it does wonders for the channel if you want to see more videos that are Vlog related bike racing all the stuff I’m doing when i’m not packing my bike bag then subscribe to the channel see you again soon take it easy all right I’m done [Music]
2 Comments
Who does the dishes?
Any Barrio Logan GP footage this year?!