Bicycle Mechanics - How fast can you build a bike?

Dumbest thread ever?!?!? Possibly. :D Well, what can I say, I'm in a good mood; the Tour's on.

Assuming nothing goes wrong, and everything fits, how fast can you put together a road bike from scratch, excluding attaching computers and lights?


I'm about to do one, so I'm just wondering?

Man, it takes me a whole day.

There's always something that doesn't fit properly

40 minutes to 1 hour for me.

Thirty minutes for a bike in a box from a major manufacturer. Couple of hours for a road bike starting with a naked frame. Add an hour a piece for laceing up wheels.

One day if it's my own bike........ a couple of hours if it's someone else's...

from opening the box to rolling it on the showroom floor:

12 minutes for a reg. mtb (no disc brakes)

19 minutes for a mtb with bisc brakes (mechanical)

14 for a sora equipped road bike

18 for an ultegra/dura-ace road bike

these times are assembled and tuned -> ready to roll out of the store

Thirty minutes for a bike in a box from a major manufacturer. Couple of hours for a road bike starting with a naked frame. Add an hour a piece for laceing up wheels.

WHAAAAT??? :eek:

you guys are freaks :D

It takes me half a day, then another half a day to get the bloody gears working

from opening the box to rolling it on the showroom floor:

12 minutes for a reg. mtb (no disc brakes)

19 minutes for a mtb with bisc brakes (mechanical)

14 for a sora equipped road bike

18 for an ultegra/dura-ace road bike

these times are assembled and tuned -> ready to roll out of the store


BLOODY HELL!!! :eek:

like Fixer hints at it really depends how you build it- when I build I bike for myself I do it the best that I can do it- I don`t care how long it takes- I just got a new bike on ebay last week- first thing I did was strip it down and repack and adjust all the bearings (wheel and bb) and the brakes- it now runs a lot smoother than it did before but I am sure I won`t have won any speed contests

15 minutes for a crusier, counting documentation and paperwork. My assistant built 5 20" beach crusiers in an hour a few weeks ago.

You shouldnt make it as fast as you can. It should be properly assembled. 1 and a half days for me.

You shouldnt make it as fast as you can. It should be properly assembled. 1 and a half days for me.

I'll stand by my times. I wouldn't worry one bit about riding on a road bike that I'd built up from a naked frame in two hours. Frankly, I don't even think that's particularly remarkable. I'm fast, but I'm not by any means the fastest bike mechanic around.

if every single part was seperate. putting on bar wraps and the whole nine. 1 to 1.5 hrs. lacing wheels, add a couple of hours. i hate lacing wheels :). i build 3-8 bikes up 5 days a week so i have had alot of practice.

now if it's from the bike is from a company, 10-20 minutes.

My record was 22 minutes on a Trek 4100... incl. truing the wheels. I'm pretty proud. :)

I stand by my times and I stand by the safety of the bikes I assemble that fast. If I didn't think it was safe it wouldn't go out on the floor.

I've had customers come in and want a bike that was in a box because their size was not on the floor. The manager asks me if I'll build it while the guy waits. I say if he pays in full, he'll have it in less than 20 minutes. This, of course, is if there's not too much to do in the shop. If the owner asks me to build up a bike while a customer waits I'll do it even faster.

And these bikes are done right. Not one of these bikes comes back because something was wrong with them or something got missed.

Sometimes it has to be done fast and done right. I'm the go-to guy in these cases. People depend on me and I deliver, every time.

I have never "timed" myself to build a bike. I estimate 20 minutes for a boxed new bike and around two hours for a bare frame build up.

Wrench when you do a 12 min Mt Bike build do you set the limits on the deraileurs and true the wheels off the bike? Also what brand are you building in 12 mins because some companys do a much better job of prep than others. Giants go together real fast but some of the others I have built do not fly together so well. I am not saying it can't be done but I am just curious is all. The fastest I have done a quality build is about 15 mins.

Great! Now I know who all the hot mechanics are :D

Wrench when you do a 12 min Mt Bike build do you set the limits on the deraileurs and true the wheels off the bike? Also what brand are you building in 12 mins because some companys do a much better job of prep than others. Giants go together real fast but some of the others I have built do not fly together so well. I am not saying it can't be done but I am just curious is all. The fastest I have done a quality build is about 15 mins.


The mtb bike was a Fuji Odessa.

The 12 minutes includes tuning the bike. I've built up some bikes that took longer because of manufacturer foul ups or that had been affected by poor shipping but the fastest was a bike that was pulled from the box without needing a wheel true, without a damaged fork, or any other damage.

Under ideal conditions anything is possible. Ideal for me is the bike wasn't fubar'ed in shipping, as some bikes are.

take me like 3min but you wont see me on that bike :D

Full tear down and rebuild including all bearings repacked on roadbike. 2 hours.

Bike in a box...well, this all depends. If your greasing all the proper items and threads as well as adjusting bearings and truing wheels....maybe a half hour or so for me.

Beach cruisers....it takes longer to do the paper work and throw the trash away....

Faster isnt better....

Bare frame MTB 2-2 1/2 hrs, Road 3-3 1/2 including wrapping the bars (road bikes hate me)
Bike in a box - 30-40 minutes (greasing everything wheels trued etc)
Beach cruiser - Real quick as long as it's not one of those Del Sol's with the fenders
Adult Tricycle - I HATE these, you always have to get parts or tweak something for them to work properly.
Miami Sun and Trailmate can kiss my http://img65.exs.cx/img65/797/dnkintrz.jpg
Recumbents depends on the type / make

Ok........game over.... so who won? ;)

Let me change the subject a bit. At an average build time of 2.5 hours (or a lot less), what would be the $ charged to the customer?

I just had a new BB, crankset, chain and headset installed for $80 in labor. Based on the above sounds like $35-40 per hour in labor rates. Is this about standard?

I just had a new BB, crankset, chain and headset installed for $80 in labor.

WHAAAAAAT?!?!?!? That sounds ridiculous to me. Put it this way: how much were the parts?

5-6 hours for each of my last 2 builds. The next will take months.

55/Rad

Let me change the subject a bit. At an average build time of 2.5 hours (or a lot less), what would be the $ charged to the customer?

I just had a new BB, crankset, chain and headset installed for $80 in labor. Based on the above sounds like $35-40 per hour in labor rates. Is this about standard?

That sounds about right to me. The kicker is the headset. That often goes pretty easily but it might require recableing and retuning the whole bike.

That sounds about right to me. The kicker is the headset. That often goes pretty easily but it might require recableing and retuning the whole bike.
That's within the right range as far as what I've seen charged.

I just had a new BB, crankset, chain and headset installed for $80 in labor.

Sounds reasonable IF these were parts being REPLACED on an existing bike.
But on the other hand, if you brought in a naked frame and have them install them, $80 is waaaay too much.... for something that may take less than 15 minutes at most to do.

14 for a sora equipped road bike


Nice to know that my AU$1000 pride and joy was built up in 14 minutes.
So... now I know why the bike shops aren't too happy when I take 15 minutes of their time asking bout an accessory which I'm curious about, not wanting to buy it. They could have built up a whole bike up in that time.

from opening the box to rolling it on the showroom floor:

12 minutes for a reg. mtb (no disc brakes)

19 minutes for a mtb with bisc brakes (mechanical)

14 for a sora equipped road bike

18 for an ultegra/dura-ace road bike

these times are assembled and tuned -> ready to roll out of the store


I wouldn't ride it, but I'd watch...

Dumbest thread ever?!?!? Possibly. :D Well, what can I say, I'm in a good mood; the Tour's on.

Assuming nothing goes wrong, and everything fits, how fast can you put together a road bike from scratch, excluding attaching computers and lights?


I'm about to do one, so I'm just wondering?

I've mentioned the Orbea I built up for my wife in previous threads; bare-frame build-up in about 3 hours. Amazingly, the only thing that did not fit the first time was the rim tape; the rolls I had on hand were the wrong width.

Miami Sun and Trailmate can kiss my ...

Oh so true. You must live near a retirement community, no?

Trikes are literally hell on wheels. 80lbs of high-tensile misery.

My bike-build numbers are pretty much the same as RetroGrouch's. I'm pretty picky, so some of my builds can go longer, especially on the $200 to $350 bikes that don't want to work as well. The thing most new bike builders don't understand is that the experienced mechanics building the $1000 to $2000 bikes really have a much easier time, since the parts naturally work better. You can practically throw a Dura-Ace group at a bike from across the room and it'll work great.

You could also just build SS/Fix bikes. I just took a frame, fork and headset to a rideable bike since I last posted here ;)

A little less than an hour, but I was stealing a lot of parts off another bike.

Oh so true. You must live near a retirement community, no?

Trikes are literally hell on wheels. 80lbs of high-tensile misery.

Q-tip central. I just LOVE putting those babies up in the stand