Assembly of a Shipped Bike
If you ordered a bike from Flying Pigeon LA, it will arrive at your door as two packages. One will be large and heavy, the other will measure about 12x12x15″ and will be very light. The heavy box has the bike and most of the bike components in it. The light box contains the front basket to your bike.
The bike will come about 80% assembled. Your preferred local bike shop mechanic will need to assemble the rest of the bicycle.
The tools you’ll need for basic bicycle assembly:
- Scissors or box cutting blade
- Phillips head screw driver (#2 size)
- Flat head screw driver (#2 size)
- Metric wrenches in the following sizes:
- 8mm
- 10mm
- 12mm
- 13mm
- 14mm
- 15mm
There are some more “advanced” types of tools that you will need to perform certain types of maintenace or repair at some point, but we’ll get to those later on.
Let’s get wrenching!
Using your scissors or your box cutter, open the large box containing the bike by cutting or slicing the tape or plastic wrap that encloses the box (make sure to cut in a direction away from your body!).
Once the large box is open, reach inside and pull out two smaller boxes that contain hardware and components. There will also be a set of 9/16” platform pedals .
Place a piece of the cardboard packaging or an old towel on the ground.
Gently lift the bicycle out of the box and lower it onto the cardboard packaging or towel you laid down.
Untie the plastic ribbons attaching components to the bike.
Using your scissors, snip away the zip ties that fix components to your bicycle (be careful not to scratch you bike frame or puncture your tires!).
Set aside the kick stand and handlebars.
Remove the front fender from the front wheel, and check if your wheel is true.
Do a quick check of your wheels, to ensure that they are running true. To check whether your wheels are true or not:
Pick up a wheel by the axles (the threaded metal skewers in the middle of the wheel) and give it a gentle spin. If the rim has a wobble or bump, then the wheel is “out of true”. An out of true wheel will need to be adjusted at a local bike shop or by a skilled bike mechanic. For more information about truing your bicycle’s wheels, check out:
If your wheels are running true, then proceed with assembly of the bike.
Pick up your front wheel.
Remove the axle nuts and washers, and set them aside.
Place the basket-mounting bracket and the front fender nearby.
Place the basket-mounting bracket onto the axle of the front wheel.
Holding the bike aloft with one hand, slide the front wheel into the bicycle’s front fork dropouts with your other hand.
Make sure the basket-mounting bracket is outside of the front fork’s dropouts.
Hook one side of your front fender’s stays onto one side of the front wheel’s axle. The order of the parts on one side of the axle (from the middle of the wheel, outward) should be: hub, front fork dropout, basket-mounting bracket, fender stay, washer, axle nut.
Hook the other fender stay onto the other side of the front axle. This may take a little bit of squeezing!
Lightly fix the fender stay in place by placing an axle washer and axle nut onto the axle, and tighten the axle nut a bit (not all the way!).
Both sides of the axle should be in the front dropouts, the basket-mounting bracket should be in place, and the front fender stays should be attached.
Slide the front fender through the front fork, and attach the fender to the front fork using the small nut and washer screwed into the rear of the front fork.
Now we’re ready to attach the handlebars and set the brakes up!
Use an 8mm wrench (or nut driver) to loosen the brake blocks on the front brake stirrup.
Give the brake stirrup a squeeze to make sure that it is “U” shaped. Try and make sure that the brake stirrup will NOT have an outward springing force once the brake blocks are clamped into place.
Slip the front brake stirrup over the sides of the front fender. The rod draw bolt (or “eye bolt”) should face outwards (away from the bike) – so that you can loosen or tighten the rod brakes from the front of the bike.
There should be a plastic plug holding a rod draw bolt (or “eye bolt”) in place at the top of the rod brake arms for both the front and rear brakes. You will have to remove these plastic plugs to install the brake rods that drop down off of the handlebars.
Next, we’ll need to have the handlebars loosely set in place.
Loosen the stem bolt a bit with a 12mm wrench to allow some movement of the stem bolt and expander. Line up the expander in a notch sliced in the bottom of the stem, and insert the stem into the headtube/front fork of the bicycle.
This next bit is a little tricky, and an extra set of hands can be a real help.
With a loose set of handlebars, insert each rod hanging off of the handlebars into it’s corresponding rod brake arm. The rod draw bolts will need to be held in place with a finger tip in the rod brake arms while you wiggle and thread the rods into the rod brake arms and rod draw bolts. It is easier to fix the front brake arm first, and then try the rear brake arm next (the rear brake arm attaches to it’s rod a bit lower than the front brake arm attaches to it’s rod). The front brake rod passes through the hole closest to the bike frame in the mounting bracket for the basket on your Flying Pigeon.
Once you’ve threaded both rods into their corresponding brake arms (and rod draw bolts), position the handlebars at approximately the height you’d like to have them.
With a 12mm wrench, slowly tighten the stem bolt. Do not over torque the stem bolt, as you risk stripping the threads on the bolt. As tension in stem bolt grows, place the front wheel between your knees. Make sure the height and vertical alignment of the bars are approximately where you want them. Place your left hand on the bars, right hand with wrench placed on stem bolt, right thumb hooked over bars. Slowly and firmly tighten the bolt by pulling the wrench towards you. Tighten in smaller increments when the bolt starts to feel firmly fixed in place.
With the handlebars installed, we can move on to the brakes.
The front brake stirrup is attached to the front fork using two brake shoe clips. The brake shoe clips retain each brake block by means of a hook on each brake shoe clip that holds a metal pin underneath each brake block.
Pick up the brake shoe clip for the left-hand side of your front fork. With your left hand, position the front brake stirrup so that each brake block has about ¼” of space (or less) between the brake block and the underside of the front rim. Hook the brake shoe clip around the pin underneath the left-hand side brake block. Swing the brake shoe clip toward the left-hand side of the front fork – this is the height at which you should attach the brake shoe clip to the front fork.
When you tighten the brake shoe clip (with a large flat-head screwdriver) to the frame, take note: screw down both sides of the brake shoe clip evenly! Tighten one side of the clip a little bit, and then tighten the other side until, gradually, the brake shoe clip is securely fastened to the front fork. Make sure that the brake shoe clip is positioned to allow the brake block to fully contact the underside of the rim when the front brake stirrup is pulled upwards.
Now that you have clamped the left-hand side brake block to the front fork, unhook it from it’s brake shoe clip!
This makes installing the right-hand side brake shoe clip much easier. Repeat the same steps for the right-hand side brake shoe clip that you used for the left-hand side brake shoe clip.
Once both brake shoe clips are securely fastened to their respective sides of the front fork, and the brake blocks are clipped into place, give the brake stirrup up a little tug upwards towards the handlebars. Moving the front brake stirrup upwards should require almost no force, and the brakes should slide back onto brake shoe clips just as easily as they were lifted up off of them.
If this is not the case, unclip both brake blocks from the brake shoe clips, and give the front stirrup a big squeeze to remove some of the “spring” in the stirrup.
Once the front brake stirrup is easily moving up and down against the rim and back down onto blocks, press the brake blocks (which are still flopping around loose) against the rim by pulling up on the brake stirrup. This will position the brake blocks to fully contact the rim when the front brake is being used (or nearly so).
Tighten the brake blocks in place using an 8mm wrench. The brake blocks should be tightened firmly into position (but don’t over tighten them!).
Give a little downward tug on the rod that feeds into the front brake stirrup and then tighten the rod draw bolt with a 10mm wrench. This bolt is not meant to bear too much of a load, so make sure it is firmly tightened but not too much, as you risk stripping the soft steel threads of the rod draw bolt.
Now that your front brake is installed, we’ll need to get the rear brake ready to go.
Tighten the rod draw bolt that retains the rod for the rear brakes. This is located on the left side of the bike, and is part of the lever arm that is fixed to left side of the down-tube.
This lever arm will itself need to be tightened to the frame a bit using two 10mm wrenches. First, hold the nut closest to the lever arm steady with one wrench. Next, with the other 10mm wrench, tighten the nut on the other side of the frame from the lever arm against the frame. The lever arm should swivel freely, but the retaining hardware should be firmly fixed in place.
There is small screw that connects two joints of the rear brake lever arm – give that screw a little turn to the right to tighten it. This screw is located near the headset, and attaches the sleeve for the rear rod with the lever that is fixed to the frame.
Moving down the frame, there is a swiveling arm that is attached to the frame on the seat tube that holds the rear brake stirrup in place. With a flathead screwdriver and your 10mm wrench, make sure that this swiveling arm is clamped to the frame properly (the same way you clamped on the front brake clips).
The rear brake clips will have to be aligned in the same way as the front brake clips. Make sure that the brake blocks can fully contact the rim when activated. Take care to ensure that the brake clips are tightened evenly on both sides to prevent rotation. It is best to work in half turns, alternating between the top screw on the brake clip and the bottom screw on the brake clip, until the brake clip is firmly in place. Use a flathead screw driver for best results.
Take note: if your rear wheel is “out of true” or mis-aligned (as they can sometimes be when assembled in a factory), the rear brake will never ride properly against the rear wheel. To fix this problem the rear wheel needs to be trued and aligned properly – which means you’ll have to remove the rear wheel. This is not an easy task for those unfamiliar with fully enclosed chains! If you need any assistance with this, please email us or give us a call.
Pedals
Bicycle pedals are not all the same. One pedal is made to fit the right crank arm of your bike (the side with the chain), and the other is made to fit the left crank arm of your bike (the side without the chain).
The spindle (the threaded, rotating, middle piece of the pedal) of the pedals will have either an “R” or an “L” engraved, etched, stamped, or marked with a sticker. The pedal with the “R” is for the right crank arm. To install the right-hand pedal, you will have rotate the spindle clockwise, or to the right – turning the spindle in the direction of the front of the bike.
The pedal with the “L” is for the left crank arm. To install the left-hand pedal, you will have to rotate the spindle of the pedal counter clockwise, or to the left – turning the spindle in the direction of the front of the bike.
Seat Post and Saddle
The saddle that comes with your Flying Pigeon will need to be attached to a seat post using a saddle clamp. To install the saddle clamp on your saddle, unscrew one of the nuts on either side of the clamp and remove the bolt, washers, and side plates from the clamp. Next, place the clamp between the two side plates and wiggle and nudge this clamp-sandwich in between the rails on the underside of the saddle. The saddle clamp should be oriented to have the fastening bolt facing the nose of the saddle and the seat post hole towards the rear of the saddle.
Once the saddle clamp and side plates are lined up and oriented properly, you can insert the fastening bolt and other hardware into the specially shaped slot in the saddle clamp. A washer with a nut should be on each side of the saddle clamp to allow even tightening and adjustment.
Insert the seat post into the saddle clamp and, with a 13mm or 14mm wrench (check to see which fits, our Flying Pigeons come with two varieties of clamps), slightly tighten the nuts on each side of the saddle. Tighten one side a turn or two, and then tighten the other side a turn or two. Leave the saddle clamp loose enough to allow you to adjust it after you’ve mounted the seat post onto the bike.
Loosen the nut on the seat post bolt on the bicycle using a 13mm wrench to allow the seat post (with saddle attached) to slide into place inside the seat tube (this bolt also fixes the rear carrier rack to the frame of the bicycle). Align the nose of the saddle with the top tube of the bicycle, and make sure the height of the saddle is approximately where you need it to be to comfortably ride the bicycle. Tighten the saddle clamp in place until the saddle cannot be moved up or down with vertical pressure applied to the nose. Holding the saddle in one hand (typically your left hand), tighten the seat post bolt’s nut using a 13mm wrench. Check that the saddle is still aligned properly. Continue tightening the nut on the seat post bolt until the seat post does not rotate when pressure is applied to the side of the saddle.
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Test ride the bike around the block slowly. Try braking and turning, braking and track standing, at low speed with your weight on the bars. Try the braking and turning while at speed.
If all is good, then your bike is ready to go!
TO BE CONTINUED
