…through general hamfistedness?

Wheel bearing change: It was all going so well at about 10pm last night, about to finish and feel all satisfied at a job well done – then I uttered those immortal words ‘this has all been too easy’.

Oh dear.

I managed to put the axle end-caps of my rear ProII on the wrong sides, probably through rushing. Then spent some time trying to hammer the bejesus out of them, convinced that the bearings had somehow become unseated, only to realise my mistake eventually. Not before (what a surprise!), I had deformed said end-caps, so that they now wouldn’t fit in the frame. I then spent some time filing them back into shape. Only to fit the wheel and find that it wobbles. The new bearings had collapsed, due to me hammering the crap out of them.

I. Will. Learn. One. Day. 🙄

Steerer tube on my Niner carbon forks after a 3 month wait. Just about got away with it. 😳

Myself, yesterday, falling off.

Steerer tube on my Niner carbon forks

proper heart in mouth moment…

I snapped another cable guide on my specialized, which are more difficult to get hold of than rocking horse poo.

You know those twin hoop anti motorcycle barriers, one small and one large hoop, next to each other?

I forgot I was on the road bike, not the MTB and managed to clip the small one with my pedal.
This stopped me dead. I then desperately tried to unclip as the bike toppled sideways, with me on it.
Result? One rear wheel which looked like a Pringle.

Yes, I am a knob.

Cost? £140.00 for a new pair of wheels.

Not a happy sausage.

My car.

Reversing out of a Sainsbury’s parking space and negelecting to notice the bollard that I promplty drove into.

The choice was £1554 repair or my £400 excess and bye-bye no claims…

I haven’t got £1600 to spare :crying:

Rear Hub, rebuilt wheel over xmas and didn’t put the small rubber seal back over the bearings.. didn’t use the bike for a efw months and then jet washed it, then didn’t use the bike for a few months then got the bike out to go play Absalon on it and ceeeeerrrrunch!

I cut only one steerer too short in my time as a mechanic, I felt a right tool.

My ribs on a big rock – still painful 3 weeks on.

Pro 11 front bearing only last week.

Thought a bit of preventive clean and regrease would extend the life of em. Sadly I poked the lip seal out and must have had a bit too much penetration and brought out the cage for the bearings too. Thankfully its a 5 minute job to replace it.

Cutting a steerer too short in the quest for aesthetic purity on the front end of an xc bike has to be my finest hour..

cue a set of forks which only fit the front of a gt zaskar if you run it with a top part of the headset missing.
Whoops!

(Mr MC posting)

last thing- my elbow (broken) and tricep (torn).
Most expensive- serviced some Marz forks, accidently put the oil seals in upside-down (still swear to this day the instructions were wrong), unbeknownst to me the wire spring popped off the oil seal and caught between bush and stanchion, so as I pushed (or, er, forced) the stanchions into the lowers the spring put a great gouge along the length of the stanchion. Cost- a new pair of forks.

Not broken, but annoyingly lost.

I changed the inner chainring on my bike recently and moved the bolts onto my workbench so I wouldn’t lose them. Cleaned up the crank/BB while I had the crank out, forgot that the bolts were on the workbench & folded it up.
Cue all the bolts flying over the garage. Took me 30 mins to find three, but could not find the 4th one at all.
Took one off the Inbred to get me riding the next day. Had another look to no avail, so ordered some new bolts.
Last weekend, I got the workbench out for something completely unrelated & notice the bolt was sat on top of the lead screw mechanism for adjusting the jaws of the workbench, caught in the grease…..

Stumpy 01 earlier today..

Was doing a bit of maintenance on my mates bike as a so called expert. After changing a rotor and a tight as bejesus HiRoller tyre I stuck back wheel on without refitting bolt thru axle…then excitedly jumped on the bike to test the supension… Awful crunchy/bending noise..look down and new rotor is warped to buggery…useless!

That MS strip is, as ever, perfectly observed. (Thank you JoB!)

Oh loads of things…

1) While dismantling a rear wheel I threw all of the spokes into one pile, not bothering to check whether they were the same length. For the next six months I drove myself mad trying to get the flamin’ thing straight before the penny dropped.

2) I rounded three bolts holding my brake disc in place and had my very first angle grinding experience removing them.

3) I have a set of X-Type cranks at home with a Crank Bros axle permanantly stuck in the non driveside crank. Nothing will shift it.

4) I snapped the lower mech hanger fitting on the chainstays of my ’04 Enduro when trying to force a mech back into alignment. Whoops…they are a weak point on those frames though.

5) I’ve done the cutting a steerer too short thing, thankfully on a £75 set of Rockshox Darts. Had I done this with my Pikes I think I would have cried.

Stumpy 01 earlier today..

😀

SMacking my rear mech into a rock on The Gap in the Brecons, about 6k into an all-day ride. My mates helped me fashion a primitive singlespeed until I could get to a bike shop, with a 100 quid bill for a new mech just to finish the day.

Shoulder, elbow, knee and jersey on link road between Lee and Cragg Quarries!

Re my niner fork, The cut was in the right place but i hadnt thought about the cutting disk on the pipe cutter having less depth than the thick carbon steerer. I took about 4 turns of the tool before i realised the rollers were just pushing harder against the carbon tube fraying and delaminating a little as i turned instead of cutting any deeper. A$se
I once swore by the pipe cutter as the best tool for the job. 😳

Late 1990’s and me and a mate were off windsurfing in spain. We had arranged a hire car with a roofrack. About an hour into the holiday and doing 100kph on the motorway there was thumping noise on the roof as the rack and about £2k worth of kit flew of into the air. I was driving and watched it land and on the motorway in the rear view mirror. Luckily the board bags and straps kept it in one lump that skidded off the road. It could have been serious if other cars were involved but they weren’t it was just all the gear that was wrecked. Bad times.

I followed a car through a toll gate barrier (the one is Dulwich) only for it to land on me as I was cycling through. Slight scratch to paint work, some painful bruising and £800 bill for a new barrier as it snapped off!

Needless to say I didn’t pay it!

My car has a huge glass panoramic roof.

More accurately, it had a huge glass panoramic roof, but now it has a hugely cracked one. Never never never try to load a long, heavy pointy thing into a car, especially if said car is almost entirely full and you’re a hamfisted fool.

Over £1k for the fix, though luckly I managed to get the insurance company to do it under the glass cover (despite the policy specifically stipulating that it’s excluded).

headset, to impatient to find a proper press, so I used a block and a mallet instead. In my defense I’ve used this technique with success before…but it didn’t this time. 🙁

ewe-r, done the exact same thing with a pair of snowboards coming off on a french autoroute at about 80mph. Thank god no one was behind us, the metal edges made some spectular sparks as they hit the tarmac, wouldnt have fancied a windscreen or skull’s chances 😯 😯

Some awesome stuff there guys! I no longer feel like the only complete nink-om-poop in the world. Particularly lovin’ that MS strip. Priceless.. 😉

Stepping back onto wheel and bending the rotor

Little finger, crushed between tree and handle bars. Months on it still doesn’t really work

son, went over the top of a berm last night. A&E say muscle damage only but he can’t put any weight on one leg

Promised to deliver a set of wheels for a mate who was moving from NI back to mainland GB, he had run out of room in his car and so I took them in my car (a few weeks later though) as he didn’t want to risk a courier damaging them. Got to his house, took the wheels out of the boot, leant them up against my car, realised we had to move my car to open garage door and promptly reversed over his wheels that he had been waiting for for a few weeks.

I snapped a shifter today on my france bike 🙁 need to get a new one pronto !

I don’t break stuff often… Broke the rocker on my full suss at fort william last month but that seems fair enough really. Last hamfisted thing, was a Superstar XCR chain device- I forgot it covers over the chainring, and went to remove the cranks with a tap from a rubber mallet 😳

Replacing a clutchmaster cylinder on my the wife’s fiesta. The plastic eyelet thing that clips onto the clutch had snapped, guess what happened to the new one when I tried to fit the plastic eyelet! Managed to avoid it with the second one…

Ah, fair play though, those things are pretty much designed to snap 🙁 And you need an extra elbow to refit the hoses too, or at least you do in the Focus.

Super dull this one is … but I’ve just fixed the 5th puncture I’ve had in 24hrs, and this time, I actually bothered to feel all of the way around the inside of the tyre properly, and removed all of the bits of thorn that’d caused the previous punctures, rather than just patching the tube and then throwing it all back together, as I’d done previously.

I’m not normally ham-fisted on mechanics – I was very definitely brought up on the measure twice / cut once principle, and being broken down miles from home focuses the mind somewhat.

I am messy and often chaotic to watch when I work, but I’m also pretty careful and methodical when it comes to the actual job itself (so usually get away with things – but I’m also lucky, so I guess that helps too).

a funny read.. jumpng on a bike with no axle in the back’s a good one.

I fitted an SLX double to my big-fork hardtail a few years back. went out to ride a quick step run in town, rolled down a few than hoiked off the last set at the bottom. bike felt odd as i tried to ride off after landing.

i’d not done up the pinch bolts, rounded out the crank splines on landing and had to roll home with both cranks pointing at the floor.

i felt better after admitting to that one )

My helmet and my body last Tuesday night, haven’t come off for a while and boy does it hurt (back and wallet).

I snapped my chain today. Twice.