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My headset came loose once.
I had the bearings in mine seize on me once, mid decent, I shit a brick.
Worse I think was a set of mid/late 2000s spec Avid Code brakes on my old DH bike, the lever sort of collapsed somehow inside the body meaning they jammed on, thankfully only, at a guess, 20% power or I would have been straight over the bars, they were massively powerful. Stupidly, I didn't junk them, I got down to the bottom of the run, sort of whacked the piston thing out and kept using them for a few months without a moments worry, these days I would binned them, but only after I destroyed the to ensure they were never found by some unsuspecting kid and used.
Oh, I forgot about the ratchet ring on my e-bike motor stripping the other week which meant having to walk / scoot the last couple of km to work a few weeks ago
Probably getting on for 20 years ago but my first suspension fork, an RST Gamma TL with a 1” threaded steerer, decided to relinquish its grip on said steerer as I hit a pothole at around 20mph. Still have the scars on my nose, which was used mainly as a brake.
More recently, road bike bars rotating downwards after a jolt at 40+ MPH. No damage and easily fixed, but I didn’t half shit myself...
Cross-threaded a pedal on a rental bike in Utah years ago. Gave way during a ride round Slickrock, had to coast/walk out. Poison Spider sorted me with a replacement crank for free though 👍🏻
Snapped a chainstay on a 95 Kona. Another walk home, wasn't far luckily.
Nothing recent though 🤞🏻
The worst one I’m admitting to was coming home, turning right at lights off a dual carriageway and the chain snapped, taking the front mech off with it.
Had to call International Rescue in the form of very pregnant and not very impressed wife.
Forgot to put the little locking pins on a set of monos. Entered one of the busiest junctions in Glasgow at the Kinning park entry to the motorway, at speed with no pads in the brakes. they'd fallen out at some point and I just didnt notice as i wasnt braking.
If anyone wants you know what the lever feel of that is its thunk, thunk, thunk.. The timing with the traffic was pure luck.
A few stick in my mind:
Wore through by rear rim and had a big loop of allow peel open in the hills above Aboyne. Tube burst but I put a replacement tube in with juuuust enough air to keep the rim off the ground and rolled slowly back down to the town, standing the whole way with my weight as far over the front wheel as I could get, and just the front brake.
Frozen freewheel on my Raleigh Maverick (oh yeah) on a ride with my Dad. Freewheeling both ways. We rigged a tow-rope and he pulled me, until I got so cold that I pulled him!
New wheels built with ultra light XC rims, on my second ride made a mess of a local descent, crashed into a tree and tacoed both.
Not destructive (fortunately I stopped pedaling before anything broke!) but descending some singletrack at Hamsterley on a nearly worn-out groupset and the chain got tangled between pedal strokes. Never seen anything quite like it and had to remove the wheel to untangle it all. Note the chain loop just by the lower jockey wheel, and the fact that the chain is almost horizontal coming off the chainrings:
Amazingly, after untangling it, everything started working again! That said, this was the last time this groupset had an outing before being replaced...
Probably last week. Somehow snapped the cage on my rear mech. The jockey wheels then jammed into the cassette. Still no idea how it happened. I tried to bodge my chain into a single speed but it never worked. I had to freewheel 10km home but managed a couple of PR's on some downs along the way.
Full on collision with back of the car. Was interesting trying to ride it 5 miles back home with front wheel polishing main triangle bottom tube to bare metal.
@teethgrinder just made me nervously looking at my Banshee...
Cheers!
I.
Snapped the bolts on my rear brake lever during a kinlochleven enduro, right as it came to the puckery-arse steep bit. I'd probably whacked it at some point but I just went "Right, I've left it as late as I can to start braking" and then it just fell off in my hand. Cue decent sized crash then limping down the rest of one of my favourite race stages with no back brake.
(obviously not the biggest in terms of cost or drama or whatever, but it was pretty impactful- way more than when I broke the frame in half and it just stopped)
Early 80s- The twang of a snapping front brake cable as I bombed down a hill towards a junction with Great Western Road in Glasgow in the rush hour
Mid 90s- Ignoring that annoying creak which turned out to be the prelude to seat post clamp failure, followed by riding ten miles home sitting on the back left corner of the saddle, and waddling for the next 3 days
3 weeks ago- Strange sensation from the driveside pedal which developed after a 60 kph descent and on investigation turned out to be a badly cracked crank
I went round a bus and straight into the back of a car parked in the bus lane. My Accu-Trax were fine, the downtube of my new Orange E2 less so. The replacement frame lasted less than a month (cracked at a weld). Didn't own an Alu frame for a good few years (20 ish) and that cracked too.
Maybe not a pure 'mechanical', but something i'll never forget.
Back in the early '90s i was lucky to have a teacher that somehow wangled taking us mountain biking for PE. (Doubly impressive as we were in Lincolnshire!)
One 'lesson' was cancelled because the weather was so filthy. But being teenagers we knew better and went out after school. There was a loop we would do that involved climbing a steep field and hanging on down a steep drop back to a footpath. Oooh, the thrills.
That afternoon i got to the top of the hill ahead of my mates and got stuck in ... but rapidly reached the limits of:
1) My Farmer John rear tyre
2) The cutting edge geometry of my Raleigh Massif
3) Any MTB skill i may have imagined i had.
As my huge 2 inch wide tractor tyre accumulated 5 inches of mud i skied out of control down the hill and realised i had two choices. Brick wall or barbed wire fence.
I picked barbed wire fence and managed to hit a post fairly square.
Mates looked down the hill pissing themselves at me crippled on the floor having worn my stem all over my groin and slashed my shellsuit (!) open on the fence.
I was pretty chuffed i'd come out of it without more physical damage or mashing my Scott helmet with Mint Sauce stickers. Until i picked up the bike. Forks were completely bent back. I still remember having to walk back to town pushing the bike on the back wheel and i've still got scars on my shin from the fence.
In the olden days when we used to put our saddle up and down manually(!), my QR seat-clamp bolt snapped. Had a bit of a rummage in the Camelbak and came up with this bodge - chain tool through the seat-clamp...
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Snapped the top of my seat post off mid commute home one day, 2 miles into a 15 mile journey. Luckily managed to find a bike shop open reasonably nearby and bought a new post.
Shattered a rear Superstar rotor while riding a double black diamond trail in Queenstown NZ. When I eventually came to a stop after going otb the only part of the rotor left was the spider. Serves me right for using cheap crappy rotors.
I've snapped 3 different frames on bike holidays. The last one was at a tiny resort (silverstar) on day one of a bike trip in bc, so I just bought a complete bike off a lifty (it was the only bike for sale for 50 miles) and was back riding in under an hour
Single bolt on my saddle clamp sheared, plonking me firmly on the tarmac behind the bike, followed by a 7 mile ride standing up / dangerously perched on the seatpost.
Had a bit of a rummage in the Camelbak and came up with this bodge – chain tool through the seat-clamp…
Nice save.
Not bad in the grand scheme but my worst ones were a seat breaking forcing me to ride three miles home standing up and the same bike had the fork drop out when entering the house after a ride.