i tried to fix what i thought was the cheaper rate electricity switch unit but was fired across the room into the wall and knocked out. Turns out when electric company came out it was where the mains came in the house and was huge voltage and i blew the local substation too 🙂

Bike wise i wanted a new rim on my ss wheel so thought id help the shop out by cutting the spokes. Turns out i couldnt get the spoke bits out as the freewheel was still on 🙂 and i couldnt get it off with no wheel to hold on to . It took a big vice and lots of damage to the hub to get the cog off 🙁 needed a new cog too and took ages longer . Bugger

Did the same firestarter while still in my pre-pubescant 'expert mechanic' stage. Took hub to shop with freewheel still on and hedgehog-like spikes all round from chopped spokes.
Oh well, its how we learn I suppose…..

Not bike related:

I worked a summer in a small machine shop, often left alone. One simple job was using a big ancient lathe to cut-to-length and shape some bar. While using the chuck key to secure the bar, I managed to brush the power knob, engaging the lathe.

In a fraction of a second, the key was under the chuck, sheared off on the bed and flying through the air at warp speed. By good fortune, my hand was palm-down so I let go, otherwise I would have lost it. And the flying chuck key could have impaled me too!

LMAO at Mantastic's wife. Very supportive 🙂

Managed to put some brake pads in the wrong way round on the car once. Metal to metal contact not best way of a stopping car! **** eejit!

There's always some good ones on thereifixedit

Didn't get quite enough spacer height above the stem so that the top cap was just resting on the top of the steerer. Spent a year with the headset going ker-clunk horribly on every bump and me thinking "I must sort that out one day". When I finally did and worked out why the hedset had never tightened up, the headset bearings were so full of s**t they were finished.

I won't say how recently that was…..!

rebuilt a suzuki x7 (250cc 2 stroke motorcycle) couldnt get it to start on the kick start.No bother I thought will just bump it down the hill.Severall sweaty pushes up and swearing downs I give it one last go, helmet gloves long since dicarded in a sweaty pool.Push to the top of a really big hill.Here I go youth and determination grrr face engaged run,run,run,jump side saddle bump style as I wasnt really expecting it too fire….. oh but it does and at full throttle .With a mixture of fear suprise and the heroic belief that the bike must survive I stupidly hung on to the bars the bike draging me along it on the back wheel me useing my knees to steer the bike before finnaly it gets away from me crashes into a car and totaling itself and badly bruising a neighbours car .Bad day bloody knees, broken bike and the neighbour shouting at me. turns out on rebuilding it I dislodged the throttle cable leaving the carbs wide open

I've had way too many…

After fitting a ghetto tubeless setup to my brand new bike I was trimming down the excess inner tube with a sturdy Stanley knife that was a tad blunt.

*Pop*

*Fssssssssssshhhhhhhh*

The end result was one brand new Kenda Nevegal sporting a 1.5" slash in the sidewall.

Buzzlightyear – an apprentice at RR had a lathe disaster of impressive proportions.
A big Colchester lathe, they had a length of bar stock through the chuck and about 6ft sticking out the back, but foolishly no steady to support it.
Busy turning and the 6ft length starts to run a bit eccentric, then bends a bit, then bends 90degrees, still spinning at 600rpm. It repeatedly smacks into the floor, rips the lathe off the floor and starts bouncing the whole machine around the workshop.
Apprenticeship fail!

sam_underhill – Member

that was may last year. got about 3mm of black stilll to grow out from my thumb nail!

The more you cut it, the quicker it grows… 😆

In an effort to not scratch my forks when trying to remove a zip-tie from the brake cable routing jobby, so intent was I to not damage the fork, that I decided the knife angle directly in to my thumb was better than towards the fork. Needless to say, I regretted the knife in to thumb nail job, when it prevented my applying any pressure with that thumb later on in the bike build.

5 months later the saw I was using to cut a bit of rail for some fencing jumped out from the cut and into my other thumb, sawing from the tip of the nail right down and out of the base. Fortunatley the angle meant I didn't cut much flesh, but with constant trimming I managed to grow out the damage before a family wedding, so an entirely new nail in under 3 months compared to the knife cut that took some 8 months!

Back to bikes and as a boy I had no idea how to get the forks sperated from my first Raleigh. An hour after I began, having removed the quill stem, got no less then 3 of my dad's favoured flat-heads wedged around the fork and then attempting to use a hammer to create play and vibration enough to work the screwdrivers out. Multiple dents in the top and downtube later (it was already due for scrap, I was just trying to gain an understanding) and I gave up. My dad was neither capable of understanding my idiocy or impressed when he went to take it out of the garage to get rid of it.

Plenty more attempts from my youth I'm sure.

Surely everyone's taken their bike out the the back of the car, put both wheels in then ridden off without connecting the V-brakes back up?

Once tried to remove the bb cup from a set of DMR chieftain cranks and kept turning it the wrong way. As I was thinking "this is really siezed" it sheared off leaving half bb cup still in the frame. Took three hours in the uni workshop with a hammer and piece of steel to uncrews it by pushing it round the thread.

tron – Member

Surely everyone's taken their bike out the the back of the car, put both wheels in then ridden off without connecting the V-brakes back up?

I have, parked at the visitor centre at the top of Sutton Bank 6 or 7 years ago, discovered when trying to slow a bit a lot for the first hairpin that I had no front brakes, cue swift left turn into the woods, luckily the gate was open or it could have been very messy 😯

about 10 years ago i was moving house, it was a sunny day, so i emptied the house onto the rear patio, tv, high end hifi everything sitting on the patio in the sunshine.

I moved the washing machine and noticed that the cold tap was jammed open.

So instead of sorting it out, i decided to turn off the water at the mains then fit one end of the washing machine hose to the cold, the other end to the hot (in one loop)…… ands turn the water back on.

all was well for 30 minutes, then i began to hear what sounded like someone using a hose in my back garden, near the expensively loaded patio….

the cold water had travelled up the hot pipe at force, into my roofspace, filled up the water heater/holder thingy, and then it had started flowing out the over-flow pipe……. which was 10 foot above my patio.

genius insurance claim form that one.

Serviced my Bomber Z1s and forgot to put the top out springs back in. I did gain an extra 20mm of travel but the clunk was really offputting.

GlenH's wife was faffing getting ready for a ride at Coed-y-Brenin so I "helped" by putting the wheels on her bike. It wasn't untill she crashed and landed on her head that rear wheel fell off because I hadn't done it up tight enough.

Bicycle – not a lot but a few motorcycles ones – my favourite was changing the oil in a set of forks – I put the new oil in without taking the old out – the bike was ridden for months with 2mm of fork travel. I couldn't figure out why.

I also did a cylinder head stud up nice and tight until it sheared. – I learnt from that one.

Edit – remembered a bicycle one – drilling out a rivet in a mudguard – straight thru the mudguard straight into my hand which was supporting the guard. Drill bit stuck in my hand – I had to blip the drill in reverse to get it off.

a friend had recently got a new Honda Fireblade. he was outside cleaning and admiring it one afternoon. he'd clean the front brake disc and caliper. for some idiotic reason he put his finger into the disc and turned the wheel . the force of the wheel turning was greater than his finger could cope with when it made contact with the calpier.

my bike related…..

building the front wheel on a jig at the LBS. one of the nipples rounded off meaning i'd have to cut the spoke in order to replace the nipple. i cut the spoke and the nipple/spoke came flying out of the rim and hit me square between the eyes.
note to self…. spokes under tension can be dangerous when cut if no rim tape is in place.