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I am sure that everyone has done the threading the chain on the wrong side of the chain guide between the jockey wheels on the derailleur early in our maintenance journeys, that is the classic silly mistake.
Today I have really outdone myself. my seatpost angle adjustment was stuck, it's a bit of a crappy design where 2 chamfered inserts wedge into the post and just use friction (carbon on carbon) to clamp it in place. I had to knock them out of the post, clean up the contact points apply a little grease, then re-assemble.
I was a bit worried about knocking out the seized parts without damaging the carbon, but everything went well, finished the job. Bit of trouble getting everything set up properly afterwards due to the crappy design, but got there in the end, put the bike away and was tidying everything away when I realised the tube of grease I used was actually diclofenac painkilling cream for my arthritic knee, doh... So I had to do it all over again.
Sounds like a faff but hopefully the job will be a bit less painful next time?
I'm waiting for the inflammatory comments
haha.
I did the chain / metal tang thing last month.
Same maintenance session, needed to take a pedal off as it was getting stiff. Made sure to google the right direction to turn the hex key to get it off the crank, watched a quick youtube to remind myself, went downstairs to the bike and promptly turned it in the wrong direction. When it refused to budge, rather than realise the obvious mistake I decided it was seized and just needed more welly. Rounded off the end of the key which had to be chucked. This is what happens when you try to fix things at 8pm after a long tiring day.
Oh and this weekend gone, again tired at the end of the day, after a 60km off road ride where the bike creaked like *insert katie price joke here* so time for a BB greasing. So I got the plastic crank removal tool and stuck it in the hole and tried to turn it, without first loosening the crank bolts. Its stuck I thought, time for mole grips. After 5 minutes spent mangling the plastic tool it dawned on me I hadn't loosened the bolts, after which it just took a light touch to release.
All obvious things we've all done before, so kinda annoying I'm doing it after a couple of decades + worth of bike maintenance
was tidying everything away when I realised the tube of grease I used was actually diclofenac painkilling cream for my arthritic knee, doh…
You'd used the carbon paste on your knee, yes?
I know of someone who got chammy cream and heat rub tubes muddled up in a dark tent early one morning pre race. That was entertaining. For us, not him.
Where's that picture of (drac's?) bike with wrongly fitted forks when you need it...?
I've done the classic front tyre and backwards on the rear wheel.
Where’s that picture of (Northwinds?) bike with wrongly fitted forks when you need it…?
ftfy
Mind you. We had a catastrophising riding buddy. We went up to the Lakes. Parked up, bikes assembled. He hops on, pulls front brake - straight back to the bars, no bite.
"Oh ****ing hell, bloody brake, knew something would go wrong etc".
He'd put the front wheel in the wrong way around.
A truly glorious moment.
Where’s that picture of (Northwinds?) bike with wrongly fitted forks when you need it…?
Saw the title and pictured Northwind banging his head against a desk
D'oh
Does anyone know what the point is of that stupid tab on rear mechs?
I was wondering why my slightly slipping seatpost, torqued correctly, still slipped when I smeared the area in carbon grip paste. Because it wasn’t carbon paste was it, it was bloody fork seal grease 🤦♂️
Does anyone know what the point is of that stupid tab on rear mechs?
To make sure you don't know which side to put the chain of course.
I'm not going to own up to the stupid one I did last weekend because I'll win and you'll all wet yourself laughing.
Pro 4 rear hub on my Stage Evo was grating badly, so ordered a new set of Hope rear hub bearings and carefully studied the Hope video twice .... just to make sure I didn't mess it up.
First ride out afterwards, smug as ☺️
Second ride out, a 'crack' everytime I put power down on the non-drive side ... really irritating. Back home checked there was no play in the bb and the cranks span sweetly. Looked in my spares box to see if I had a couple of new unused Hope frame pivot bearings ready to fit ... ... oddly there was a 3rd unused new bearing staring straight at me 🙈
Doubt @oldfart could beat that?
matt_outandabout
Full MemberWhere’s that picture of (drac’s?) bike with wrongly fitted forks when you need it…?
I AM FREE!
Just for a change, a nonbike ****up, I'm rebuilding an MX5 at the moment and slightly slowed the process down by filling the power steering system with dot 5 brake fluid. Came in the same shape bottle, is my excuse
Is it just me for which Phil_H's silly maintenance mistake isn't obvious?
Mine was trying to remove the a pair of bearings from the rear of my Canyon Nerve XC. Simple job I thought, push them both out in one go, but they weren't shifting no matter what I tried, and I really did try! Eventually realized they were blind bearings with a lip between them. Didn't damage the frame too badly, only that the replacement bearings almost just slipped in without a bearing press.
Is it just me for which Phil_H’s silly maintenance mistake isn’t obvious?
It took me a lot of staring too - the sag o ring is on the side that the sag indicator isn’t.
I'm assuming it's the oring on the wrong stanchion for measuring sag following a lowers service
Had a friend ride Gisburn with no front brake - he'd forgotten to reinstall the top reservoir bolt following a top up bleed, so all the mineral oil was in his boot carpet instead of in his brake. Fastest he's ever ridden, mind you 😂
My first try with a torque wrench, tightening up stem bolts. I didn't realise how subtle the click was, carried on tightening, before hearing a snap. I thought that was the feedback from the tool of 5Nm being achieved but it was the stem cracking around the bolt. Fortunately not an expensive stem.
I learned that a torque wrench needs to be respected and ironically can be worse than simple hand tightening if you're not paying attention.
First time I removed the front calliper on my HT I didn't realise the bolts were different lengths. Happily screwing up the short one in the hole for the longer one when "crack", threads stripped.
At the weekend, I repeatedly tried to install the crankset to the NDS. Have I got the wrong shims? Have I not installed the chainring correctly? Is the chainring the wrong offset? No, I'm just an idiot. Phew, thought it was going to be expensive.
Took a Pro4 rear apart,spent ages getting the pawls and springs spotless. Popped them back in, nicely greased, wrestled with the freehub seal, finally got it seated, nice click, cassette back on, put bike together.
Wheeled forwards to test ride, pedals turned. Odd? Just a bit of friction from the seal selling in place. *Shrug*
Day on bike, put a pedal stroke in, clickclickckick.
Turns out that it's dead easy to put the pawls in the wrong way round. I now had a bike with all the negatives of a fixie, and none of the positives of a bike that could be pedaled. Perfect for fakies, mind.
Successfully shortened a hydro brake hose to fit to a 6 year olds brake without losing a drop of fluid - because I didn’t have a bottle of the right fluid in so couldn’t afford to lose any. Got a decent bleed with the fluid I’d saved in the syringe. Removed the bottom syringe… first. Watched all the fluid piss onto the floor.
Similar to @oceanskipper except I tore the mount clean off the fork, that was an expensive mistake.....
Bleeding a new caliper and lever set up with Muc Off was a new low for me.
… oddly there was a 3rd unused new bearing staring straight at me
Not the only one to make this mistake. Concorde engineers managed to miss out replacing a wheel spacer when servicing the landing gear. Found on the work bench by the crash investigators after the Paris disaster.
Measuring the chain around the largest chainring and largest sprocket, then cutting off two links, rather than adding two links.
Every time I do a bike build I think "this time I won't make any mistakes", but there's always one event like that.
Bleeding the brakes in a hurry,
Like that's ever going to end well!
Forgetting a spacer in the cassette is annoying.
Once did a big ride in horrible conditions. Drive train made such a horrible noise up a monster hill that I thought it was going to expire so walked for the steepest part. At the Cafe after the ride I was contemplating why it was so noisy when I'd removed and cleaned the chain the day before. Then I noticed it was on the wrong way around.
Sizing new chain. Take off old chain. Big ring to big ring, measure it up, add two links mark it, measure twice, yep, that's right, break chain.
Managed to break chain at the join point, rather than the +2 point. It's still just about fitting - the LBS didn't complain when they serviced it - but come on, I measured it three times, how did I still get it wrong?
(The answer is: I did without my usual Really Dark Sharpie).
Surely you just put old chain next to new one and pop the extra links off
I once forgot to put my front brake pads back in again.... Pulled the lever (thankfully in the garage when the rotor was in) and was trying to work out why the lever came all the way back to the bar....
Another riding buddy put his brake pads back in upside down, so there was nothing actually holding them in.
He rode our local woodland stuff for about 20 minutes before the inevitable brown trousers moment - luckily on a flat-ish bit, so no harm done.
I give up.
Just rest easy in the knowledge Northwind... I have it at my finger tips for when the forum stays still for long enough to actually work.
20ish years ago I changed the BB on my bike the evening before a snowy night ride. I ran out of time to fit the cranks, so just took them with me along with an 8mm allan key to fit them in the car park before the ride.
Chatting to my mates whilst fitting the square taper cranks so I wasn't paying attention and I fitted them at 90' to each other rather than 180' and non of us had a crank extractor.
I did the ride with my wafty cranks. It's surprisingly hard to pedal a bike like that!
My first try with a torque wrench, tightening up stem bolts. I didn’t realise how subtle the click was, carried on tightening, before hearing a snap. I thought that was the feedback from the tool of 5Nm being achieved but it was the stem cracking around the bolt. Fortunately not an expensive stem.
I learned that a torque wrench needs to be respected and ironically can be worse than simple hand tightening if you’re not paying attention.
similarly my first time with a bike torque wrench I snapped a bolt off.
only TW experience had been building site ones where you are proving something is done up tight - so you just pull on a wrench the length of your arm until it clicks to show that the M20 is at 150Nm.
didn't realise it was a subtle click to tell you when to stop and that you would be putting more force in if you kept turning...
I replaced the pads in my Formula rear brake when in the Alps with the White Room. Did it after a couple of beers in the evening, when a bit dehydrated, but it all went well and I didn't even damage the famously-made-of-cheese bolt that holds the pads in.
Next day, after a good few DH runs I thought the back brake was getting a bit unreliable...when I looked there were no pads in there. The bolt was in place but I must have missed the holes in the pads and they must have pinged out at some stage. I'd been braking on the pistons for 'some' time.
Luckily we were near a village with a bike shop and I managed to buy a new set of pads at an eye-watering price. Amazingly the pistons weren't damaged at all and the brakes worked perfectly after that.
I haven't been allowed to forget this incident by my pals!
Just this morning I decided to top the Stans up in the back tyre, five minute job...
Find Stans, shake bottle, remove screw on top...
Suspend the bike so I don't have to bend down too far...another quick shake before filling the syringe with Stans. Yep, the bottle that I removed the screw top from!
5 minute job and another 20 cleaning the garage, doh!
I strip my bikes annually and I can never remember which way to undo the pedals and the Shimano external BB cups.
I also forget that I can't adjust the Fulcrum rear hub bearings, which has had play in it from new, but it doesn't stop me trying. Every ****ing year!
The other day I was putting a new tire on my wife's bike, I seated the tire manually and I was just injecting the sealant through the valve but forgot to check that the tire bead was seated all the way around and not caught on the back end of the valve.... To say I squirted 60 mL of sealant straight down my leg and not into the tire
Is that you badger?
I have alo tried to stop a wheel spinning by grabbing the rotor.
Related to that, a mechanic in a shop I worked in was checking out chain tension on a fixie by pulling on the chain with a finger. Then he absentmindedly spun the rear wheel backwards while his finger was resting on the chain...
Anyway once the screams had subsided, we found the amputated tip of his finger, packed it in ice and they sewed it back on at the hospital.
The workshop floor had a little red patch of blood on it for a surprisingly long time where it had soaked into the laminate.
Isn’t Northwind’s excuse that he was building up the bike so it wasn’t maintenance per se?
My 2: replaced the fuel tank on my Triumph Spitfire and swapped over the sender unit from the old one. It’s halfway up the tank, I put a few litres from a can to get it to the petrol station. It held about 35 litres-waiting for the pump to click off for ages and I’d dispensed c50 litres. Yep I hadn’t tightened it fully and had a boot full of fuel and it was starting to seep out of seems and rust holes.
No2- put a grab rail on the decking so that my son could walk down the steps unaided. Forgot about the cable going up the centre of the deck post- cue one light out of action.
Went to reseat a tubeless tyre for the first time in my life. Everything ready went to change my fancy new pump to the correct valve , out falls a spring straight down a hole in my lock up floor.
Pump stuffed and me pissed off mightily
5 year old son’s first ride at Decoy BMX track on his new MTB, he did one lap and they said his brakes didn’t work? Pulled the lever to the bar! Fugitive! I must have bled it wrong. Turns out I’d left the split pin out of the rear brakes when I set them up. Bit of a panic as I had no spares that even so I ended up nicking the ones from the front and telling him not to use it. Bugger!
