My new bike arrived today, and it’s requiring a lot more done to it than expected.

I need to fit:

Rotors
Stem
Headset bearings (cups are in the frame)
Star fangled nut
Crown race
Front brake

Everything has been supplied dry so I’m greasing as I go, and I’ll probably do the same to the BB just to be safe.

It also looks like I may need to cut the steerer from ‘enormous’ to ‘normal’

Is this what you always need to do when you buy a bike online? I don’t object to doing so, but thought it’s a bit harsh to expect that of someone unable to build and fix bikes…

I thought normally you just had to turn the handlebars round the right way.

That was what I thought too.

Varies a lot, and depends on who you buy from. If you buy from a box shifter than you get what you got – a bike exactly as it comes from the manufacturer, who expect a competent LBS mechanic will spend a couple of hours putting it together and getting it sorted.

But if you buy from a good online retailer (Dales, Realcycles for conventional bikes, me for weird things, for instance), then the shop will fully assemble and check over the bike first, before doing the minimum dismantling required to ship the bike, usually just removing the pedals and turning the bars.

You pays your money and takes your choice.

My On One just needed the drop bars fitting. Or was that turning. Can’t fault the assembly/

Thanks for the insight Ben. It came from a retailer who appear to be the subsidiary of the importer. I personally think that selling to an end user but expecting it to be built by a mechanic is a bit cheap, even moreso if I paid anything close to retail.

On the plus side, I have some work to do tonight which will need to be postponed…

To me, it sounds like you bought a build kit not a bike.

On my last bike I had to re-align the tyre logo/valves correctly, those damn amateurs!

did a few months work at a company that sold bikes online, most required handlebars fitting, front wheel fitting and pedals attaching… oh and the saddle/seatpost inserting.

Ah well, I’m past the worst (crown race fitting involved a wooden clothes peg and a hammer) so should be done soon enough. It’s almost pipe cutter time for the steerer though

Some manufacturers won’t allow online purchases because they don’t trust users to assemble the bike competently and safely. It’s worth checking the wording of any warranty in case a condition is that it has been assembled by a professional bike mechanic.

Most boxed bikes have most parts fitted less front wheels pedals bar
But nothing will work or be set up.

The only one I’ve had like the op describes was my orange hardtail
Was more like a build kit and even the bits they had assembled where wrong

I thought normally you just had to turn the handlebars round the right way.

Oh how quaint and naive. 😉

It’ll need a proper PDI, I would have thought. Sounds like a normal boxed bike direct from the distributor from the description. 30-45 min job when you’ve done it 100 times or so.
Even with a professional mail order supplier like Canyon there’s some assembly required. If you’re not confident with a few tools, then that’s what your LBS is for. 🙂

Level of assembly depends on bike type and manufacturer. 29ers for example are generally supplied without the forks fitted, so you’ll find the headset in a bag and need to know what order to assemble it, and you’ll need some grease.
One CX bike I could mention needs fully cabling up from scratch (internal routing….) and then the outers cutting if you want to fit the extra brake levers on the top of the drops.

There was a problem with the forks initially so they went to SRAM for a new crown/steerer, and were boxed up separately within the big box. They’d helpfully placed the crown race on the steerer loosely, as if to remind me it would need fitted sometime but they weren’t going to bother.

All done now though, so hopefully it won’t go all slapstick on me tomorrow and fall apart…

I recently bought a bike on-line, it needed a lot of assembly, including cutting the steerer tube.

instead of assembling it, i stripped it even further – just to makes sure everything was right. I found a few dry bearings, and some bolts that were far beyond ‘tight enough’ – i can only imagine how much damage i’d have done if i’d waited 1 or 2 years before attempting to service the pivots.

if anything, i’d be happy to buy a box of parts that needed FULL assembly, it would save me the trouble of disassembling…

it needed a lot of assembly, including cutting the steerer tube.

High end road bike by any chance? Par for the course…. 🙂

instead of assembling it, i stripped it even further – just to makes sure everything was right.

Yep. When I buy a bike for me I’ll do some disassembly myself. Any C&C hubs will be regressed and checked for a start.

…High end road bike by any chance?…

mtb (bargain Horsethief)

it didn’t bother me at all though, steerer tube length is a tricky thing to guess – especially when guessing for someone else. Too short, and people will grumble. Too long, and people will grumble. But, Too long is probably better than too short…

I expected to have to align the bars and fit some pedals and was surprised when the box arrived and the only thing that came fitted was the headset and bb and the tyres/tubes were fittedto the wheels. A couple of hours and it was ready to ride so no biggie, except i had paid an additional £30 to have the bike prebuilt.

I expected my last bike to need some assembly but it turned up in a box twice my size and with just the handlebars to tighten. Got the bike at half price.

I will happily buy from Rutland cycling again.

ahwiles – Member

mtb (bargain Horsethief)

Mine is an El Mariachi, so I’m guessing we used the same retailer. Interesting what you say about dry bearings. I’ve not ridden mine properly yet so I’ll take out the BB and grease it properly before I take it out.

Bought from Wheelies: pedals and align bars – all set up perfectly.
Bought from another shop: everything except BB and headset!

That covers the whole spectrum. The latter was a bargain Genesis ioid at half price, so I didn’t grumble.

Crown race I would expect to be fitted everything else seems par for the course, you didn’t mention pedals which seem to be universal, maybe fitting bars into stem too.

SFN is a tricky one for shops, do they cut down the steerer and fit sfn risking it being too short or leave it full length? Either way SFN is probably going to need sorting out again. Supplying an expander thingy would fix that tho.

Yeah, I got a Horsethief from Billys in that sale. I took it to the LBS to have it assembled – figured it’d help with any future warranty issues if I had it do professionally.

On my third ride at the weekend and noticed a little bit of clicking – that dry metal sound.

Looks like I’ll be doing some greasing tonight.

Working in a Bike Shop you get many varients. Giant for example come pretty much built with minimum assembly needed.

Specialized on the other hand come pretty much frame only except the cheaper hardtails is what I’ve found.

Peterpoddy, you aren’t talking about a Specialized Tricross are you. I had to fit cross top levers to it, fully cable it, got both wheels, brakes? Handlebars and even bar tape.

uhmmm, horsethief here as well (for a mate). First intro to steerer cutting, seemed to get away with it! WIll be checking the pivot bolts though…

Had a look at the BB on the Horsethief last night – decent amount of grease in there.
Didn’t check the pivots though, not really sure how to get the bearings out. Is it just a case of opening up the covers on the faces of them?

Clicking noise that I thought was the BB was a loose cleat

i just loosened/removed the bolts, and used a stanley-blade to carefully remove the seals. Then I pushed a load of grease in with my finger, then popped the seals back on, and reassembled – so that the bolts were merely ‘tight’.

Did you need to remove or de-pressurise the shock?