I’ll start – rode 10 miles in this configuration. I wondered why i’d suddenly developed toe overlap !

My first road bike in about 20 years, with one o’them fancy octalink BBs

Didn’t realise there were 2 different sizes/depths of splines. Took some bloody tightening on, I’ll tell you ! 😳

Fitting a Fool roofbox to a bike.

I may have been replacing cables in the road bike, it might have been past beer o’clock on a Friday. It did take about 30 mins of playing with barrel adjusters the next day to accept that I’d put connected the front shifter to the rear mech…

Putting a 1/2 shaft back into the axle of a D Series Ford truck a lot of years ago, face fit/flange/axle = 6 blood blisters.

Hahah, brilliant!

I’m generally pretty good as I’ve done quite a bit of self servicing on my cars over time..

I try to avoid alcohol but i still do stupid stuff like fit tyres backwards if I’ve had a few ales!

Many years ago rebuilding a Suzuki X7 engine,first time I used a torque wrench & thinking to myself these crankcase bolts are getting tight but the wrench still hasn’t clicked followed by a bolt snapping 😯
I hadn’t realised the wrench only ‘clicks’ one way…

On the snapping almost spookily in timing the banjo fitting on an original Hope Mini Mono snapped under my spanner just as it would become impossible to get to the LBS in time the night before heading off to meet some mates for a ride…

(thanks to the Guys in the old bike shop in Glentress who uttered the magic words go grab some breakfast we will see what we can do)

There’s just something about On Ones, I find it hard to tell which way up they go

[url=https://flic.kr/p/ardXir]OH GOD[/url] by Northwindlowlander, on Flickr

You fud 🙂

Despite being reasonably handy i am banned from fitting pedals to bikes. I have stripped the threads on 2 brand new cranksets and managed to turn a pedal the wrong way to take off so hard the insert started spinning…

rode 10 miles in this configuration

Strong work indeed. 🙂

Bleeding front Shimano brake. Syringe connected to caliper, funnel thingy on lever.
Pushing fluid through, got a fair bit of resistance. Assumed it was down to narrow bore of syringe/pipe. Only when fluid started pissing out of the lever main seal that I realised the funnel was in the rear brake lever…

I’ve done the rear gear cable to front mech thing before too, using the same length in nets for both and running them both to the under bb cable guide before connecting to mech. I always do one at a time on any bike with a front & rear now…

I did see a mate put a new chain round the large ring & largest sprocket on cassette to set chain length. Shortened it and then proceeded to join it in situ without bothering with the rear mech…

Kangaroo cranks on square tapers more often than i care to admit.

I might have bought a Superstar mini Torque wrench last year and in order to “test it” went to adjust the magura MT4 brake levers on my new electric bike. The brake levers are held in place by a proprietary bolt/nut thing with a torx hole in it.
With the torx wrench on the lowest setting I kept tightening, waiting for the click. It never clicked and I might have wrecked the bolt.
Lesson is that Superstar mini-torque wrenches have a head that flops a few degrees, and don’t go “click” at the correct torque.
.

Re fitted the slide to my Gilera moped upside down many decades ago. It ran! Same bike also ran backwards when the timing was a touch out. Last night I dropped a nipple into a rim. Took nearly an hour before it came out. Two minutes later I did it again. 10 minutes this time

Using some needle nose pliers to pull the end of a ziptie that was holding on a brake hose…needle nose pliers slipped and jerked back scrapping down the back of the stanchion on my 2 ride old Rebas 😥

One Thursday night at work, the last job before we knocked off for a long weekend, I was tasked with changing a power take off shaft on a tornado. Got the old shaft out and new one fitted, and the engine dry cranked in record time. Tools away, happy days, quickly get the paperwork done and that’s us done…
Upon looking at the paperwork, I turn to my supervisor pointing at the words right hand, on the paperwork, yep you guessed it we had changed the left hand one. Tools back out, new on off, old one refitted, then right hand one changed as it should be, 2 engines dry cranked and tools away.
This time we knocked half hour off the original time, but still, our early finish was right out the window

Dropped bottom headset bearing out of frame while swapping forks over without realising

Rode all of W2 at Afan and wondered why it was steering so strangely.

The three photos that have accompanied this thread have caused keyboard/tea interface.

Do carry on.

When you take “3 cross” literally. 😳

I once put a tyre on the wrong way around.

Snapped the stud off the bottom of a Talas cartridge in a pair of Fox 36’s by over tightening it after a service. I let the LBS fit the replacement.

Also, didn’t refit the bolt that holds a square taper crank back on after fitting a new bb. Very surprised that the crank stayed on for 15 miles before falling off.

This is NW and I claim my five pounds 🙂

A special type of genius to do it twice! My pantheon of mechanical mistakes is far too large to explain here. I did once ‘service’ some juicy brakes with a mallet. They didn’t work before, they didn’t work afterwards but by god I felt better.

First bike I built for myself as a kid, with parts bought out of MBUK. Bottom bracket was a bit stiff to get in, so just used a very long pole on the spanner. Only when it was in did I realise I’d put it in backwards, cross-threading all the way.

Still worked for years, though.

Ooh I’m good at this. Retaped new road bars before putting the brake levers/shifters back on. Makes it very easy to get a nice even wrap.

When converting my old bike to single-speed, I slid the spacers onto the freehub, tightened up the lock nut then realised I hadn’t put the cog on.

I hadn’t put the cog on.

Oh, that’s evil. Like a reveal chess move. You slap your forehead, and chuckle, and say to yourself, “ah well, I’ll just take the lock nut off and….”

…Boom! It hits you.

Laughing quite hard at some of these.

I hadn’t put the cog on.

Oh, that’s evil. Like a reveal chess move. You slap your forehead, and chuckle, and say to yourself, “ah well, I’ll just take the lock nut off and….”

…Boom! It hits you.

A lot of swearing and a set of mole grips finally rectified the situation. Well, the mole grips did, I’m not sure the f-bombs really did much to help.

Sounds like a job for All The Mole Grips. Give me a large enough number of mole grips and a place to stand and I will slightly ovalise the earth.

Managed to ride afew miles wondering what the rattling noise was before realising I’d threaded my new chain through my new mech wrong.

Fitting a new pair of very rare 1″ threadless white brothers forks, fitted crown race, all headset parts a few spacers marked and cut the steerer put the forks in……forgot to include the stem when I measured the steerer 😳 steerer 11/2 too short, non removable crown!

Trying to bleed a hateful set of Juicys a couple of years ago with a mate.

I’m at the calliper end with one syringe, he’s at the lever end with another – I’m pushing, nothing, double check clamps open, push, pull the lever, nothing swear at it, push some more – “these are ****” which was pretty much the last excuse I needed to buy something else when it dropped.

I was on the front calliper, he was on the rear lever.

Square taper bottom brackets & crank extractors. Glad to see the back of them.

building up a road bike, first time with GXP (on road) measured BB shell 68. took spacers to space shell to 73 (as you do with mtb).

tightened cranks they’re binding. stripped down rebuilt (2 or three times.) took me a good day to figure out that i needed to remove a pair of spacers!

there is no 73 shell on road. 😳

6 months with my chain incorrectly through the new rear mech, rubbing on the metal tab. Which then fell off in my hands.

Cross threaded a newly restored old school bmx frame bb shell.

Various times forgetting to torque up car wheel nuts.

My favourite was putting a woodruff key into the main crank pulley incorrectly, on a freshly rebuilt Peugeot mi16 engine that had been fettled by cosworth. Pulley slipped, and smashed a couple of valves into my shiney New head.

Jerry…words fail me!

🙂

i always seem to find that special allen key. The one thats been made undersize so that it looks like its a good fit when you start removing it and then all of the sudden rounds off the inside of the bolt.