Decided to change the scabby outer cables on the hack the other night. Got the cutters, hex keys, ferrules and a nice bit of SP41 all ready.

It took just a few minutes to thread the first two sections of outer on, but then the inner decided to fray. And it was attached to an SRAM shifter *groan*

What simple tasks have you started & regretted?

Getting my legs waxed.

nearly every bike maintenance job, especially those that will ‘only’ take 2 minutes before a ride….

Chatting up a girl in the sauna at the gym. Still with her 12 years later.

Went to change the spring in my Pikes on Sunday. Easy.
Take off U-turn adjuster,
Use socket to unscrew spring,
knock the spring from bottom with hammer.

I didnt realise that when unscrewing the fork would drop and all the little springs in the top would jump out. So I had to take an old speaker apart to get a strong magnet to find the 3 tiny springs that had catapaulted into the grass 🙁

Changing inner chainring only to fling chainring bolts across the floor while folding my workbench to make more space.
Took 25mins to find 3 of them and then gave up searching for the 4th after an hour, and took a bolt temporarily out of another chainset. Eventually found the missing bolt several months later stuck to the grease on one of the screw mechanisms of the work bench, so it wasn’t even on the floor that i had spent an hour searching……..

It would appear that having sex with mrs S has landed me with 18 years of parenting ahead 😉

Took the mudguards off my foldie last night, looks like I’ll be putting them back on tonight.

Stoner – the op said minutes, not seconds.. 😉

Invariably, every time i try to do anything with a wireless network it turns into the scene from Apollo 13 when they are trying to find a way to reduce Co2 levels by pulling everything to pieces and putting it back together with duck tape.

Building a custom shed. Started with grand plans and currently have a base, two sides a back and half a front. 18 months later. The blue tarp covering it all up really sets off the garden.

Brushing my teeth in our old house…

..dropped the mug I was using to rinse out my mouth, which cracked the sink of the cream coloured suite, which had to be replaced with a white one, which required ripping out all the tiles and re-tiling the bathroom, and plumbing in a new shower.

All of this 2 weeks before we put the house up for sale…

Changing a gear inner for me. Turns out that the outers had pinched due to using triple crown forks and having them squash the outers a bit, so I couldn’t thread the cable back in and it just frayed. So had to get new outers as I couldn’t seem to remove the blockage.

Any time I try and do anything, ever.

Replace disc brake pads the other weekend, at 12.30am the night before after being at the pub- about 1 hour spent prizing the pistons back just to make it physically possible to force the rotor in the non-existant gap between pads. That’s not even counting the 15mins I had to spend riding around with my brakes on the next morning.

Repaired a puncture in the pissing rain, miles from home in Hayfield. Another flat 15 yards down the road. Repaired that, realised I’d lost the nut off the QR

…45mins pawing around on the muddy sodden floor looking for it

Titec H Bars. The ‘buying’ took all of 10 mins. Fitting blinking shifters and brakes that you could get to took fookin ages man

After ages I finally got round to checking the wiring on one of the cooling fans on my motorbike, I gave up in the end as I couldn’t find it .i Put it all back together fired it up and got engine warning light and only running on one cylinder. I had some how snapped the connector from the front cylinder to power I had to remove fairings tank airbox still couldn’t find it. Took about three days in the end to hunt it out behind the frame with a coathanger 🙁

Bloody lead for the fan was ziptied up under the seat for some reason by the previous owner and it worked , I found it totally by accident when getting to the dealer mode plug to get the engine fault I had created above looking for it lol

Stripped wallpaper in spare bedroom with a steamer and the wall fell down – turned out the paper was all that was holding it together. Had to shift half a tonne of plaster, rip off all the lathes, put new joists in, put plaster board up, skim wall, refit skirting boards…..

Stripped wallpaper in spare bedroom with a steamer and the wall fell down

😆

Stripped wallpaper in spare bedroom with a steamer and the wall fell down

😆 priceless!

Stripped wallpaper in spare bedroom with a steamer and the wall fell down

😆

footflaps for the win!

I spent far too long fitting a toilet seat at the weekend.

I spent far too long fitting a toilet seat at the weekend.

Were you stood on it? Much easier from floor level.

stripped the sump plug when doing an oil change on my motorbike. ended up helicoiling the alu sump but had to completely strip the engine just to satisfy myself that there wasn’t any swarf in the sump. there wasn’t.

Do you mean the ‘simple 10 minutes’ that your wife thinks it will take you to complete or the realistic ‘look love, I really don’t know how long this will take me until I have done it – Can I tell you when I have finished?’*

*On Sunday the answer was ‘just over 6 hours’ to find, diagnose and fix a leak coming from a boxed in foul pipe.

I guess it will take me a ‘simple 10 minutes’ to put right the three holes I made in trying to find the source of the leak in the first place.

👿

Thought I’d clean the conservatory roof today.. Had cavity Walls done yesterday and it was dusty..
Ended up clambering all over it, needed washed, scrubbed, then rinsed.. Cleaned out gutters and lead valley, ended up resealing the ridges also.. Best part of three hours!

A tyre change developed into a BB regrease, which developed into a pivot out of alignment which when I finally changed the tyres and was putting wheel back in, revealed a broken spoke. 👿