Dropout Wooden Blocks
Both of my bikes will be transported by a moving company this month. Either in a truck, or by air. So I have to prepare them for the transfer as a luggage. For that purpose, I obtained a couple of bike covers (one self-made and one bought).
One of known problems when transporting disassembled bicycles is a chance of bending fork legs or rear wheel dropouts. Bicycles are very strong against planar forces, but rather weak against lateral ones.
This is especially true when there are no wheels and their axles to support the lateral load. Sideways strikes can bend frame irrepairably.
Several years ago I found the following approach to counteract this problem: use wooden spacers inserted between dropouts when transporting. I made a pair for one bike and used them successfully when transporting it by train.
A couple of days ago I made another pair for the seconds bike. Here is how it looks:
This bike’s wheels do not use QR-axles, there are solid ones, so I took another pair of spare QR-skewers. Coming from an MTB, they are longer than necessary. To compensate for extra length, I’ve put several spacers and nuts on skewers.
The complete set of front and rear wooden blocks.
Let’s see how it works in practice.