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  • Mechanical problems no-one else has ever had
  • andrewh
    Free Member

    Doesn’t have to bike related.
    .
    I’ll go first. Anyone else had this?
    Snapped crank-bolt on a square-taper BB. The head broke off, the thread stayed inside the BB axle. It was the driveside so the chainset fell off and couldn’t be replaced (Tried using the bolt out of the non-drive side to allow me to pedal one-legged but it wouldn’t go in because of the remaining bolt inside) Long run home…
    Turns out to be a real PITA to get a BB out with a snapped bolt in it. usual practice is to use the bolt to hold the tool on. Had to make a whole new thing out of wood and G-clamps to do this instead. Took ages and a lot of swearing.
    .
    Anyone else?

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    Sorry, that was actually quite common in the early days of aluminium crank bolts……. until people learnt to tighten down with the steel bolt and just hold in place with the aluminium.

    nealglover
    Free Member

    I had a tailgate gas strut fail once, but it failed “open” and I had to drive from Dover to York at 2am with the van tailgate fully open.

    Bloody freezing it was.

    And the whole interior (including me) was wet with road spray getting sucked in.

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    cchris2lou
    Full Member

    Snapped front mech hanger yesterday. 1 rivet was already loose and the other one just snapped.
    Just ordered a rivet gun to try to fix it.
    Need to grind leftover of the rivets first, I’m bit nervous as it is carbon frame.

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    Snapped crank-bolt on a square-taper BB

    Been there, done that.

    craigxxl
    Free Member

    A runaway diesel engine on a truck. Couldn’t switch it off, unable to change gear and brakes were smoking from trying to slow it down. Eventually seized up after using most of it oil as fuel.

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    Been there, done that, run out of the workshop.

    As i suspect anyone who has worked on prototype diesels has.

    craigxxl
    Free Member

    I had an exhaust explode on Ford Capri but as it did it cut clean through the fuel pipe too leaving me stuck on the M1 drying the pipe with socks so that I could tape it back together with some insulation tape so I could get back home.
    Little disappointed to find out months later that the garage that charged me for fitting a new exhaust and fuel line hadn’t replaced the pipe and my bodge was still working 1000’s of miles after.

    igm
    Full Member

    Snapped the spindle of an XT (760?) crankset.

    I mean seriously ripped it into two pieces.

    By just riding along. Slowly. On a steady climb.

    northernmatt
    Full Member

    Snapped the spindle of an XT (760?) crankset.

    I know someone that did that to an SLX M665 one. It split sort of along and around in a spiral pattern so when he tried to pedal it unwound and got stuck.

    edit: found a pic

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    Quite a few years ago, I replaced the cables, bottom bracket, chain, cassette etc on a year old bike and noticed that the bike was reluctant to shift out of the granny ring.

    I rerouted the front shifter cable just to be sure but the problem persisted, I eventually discovered that the cage of my LX front mech had sheared and that the chain was jumping out of the split in the cage.

    Twelve months later, the helicoil holding the retaining bolt in my new XT front mech sheared and I was left to pedal home in the granny ring again.

    I’ve not had an issue with a front mech since.

    SaxonRider
    Full Member

    The steering shaft in my car once snapped clean in half.

    I had just turned off the QE2 expressway in Toronto onto Yonge Street just as the afternnon rush hour was beginning, when BANG!

    Every pedestrian around jumped, and then stared. Smoke billowed out from under the bonnet, and my steering wheel was no longer attached to anything.

    I bet no one on here has ever had that happen to them before.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    I had a few on the motorbike but one I liked was the speedo conversion I did, I had a moment of senility and fitted 5 rotor magnets instead of 4, so the speedo overread by 20%. All of a sudden I was the fastest man in the world!

    igm
    Full Member

    Not dissimilar Northernmatt, but mine was fully in two pieces. The drive side fell out. Glad I was on flats really.

    scaredypants
    Full Member

    I had a crash on a road bike ages ago where the retaining bolt on the front brake caliper came off. As I braked at the bottom of a hill, the brake pulled away from the frame, ran along with the rim until the brake cable pulled tight and then stopped the wheel dead. I exchanged 12hrs of memory for a night in hospital.

    @saxonrider, I was walking along beside a road once when the last remaining mount failed and some bloke’s engine dropped right out of his car onto the road. That also made quite a noise !

    legend
    Free Member

    @saxonrider, I was walking along beside a road once when the last remaining mount failed and some bloke’s engine dropped right out of his car onto the road.

    Wasn’t an MG was it? Happened years ago to my Dad

    Stoatsbrother
    Free Member

    @saxonrider, I was walking along beside a road once when the last remaining mount failed and some bloke’s engine dropped right out of his car onto the road. That also made quite a noise

    I saw that happen to a Double Decker Bus leaving the depot near a station I used when I went to school. Might have been just the gearbox and transmission. Blocked the exit of the depot. Left an impressive mess on the road. I suspect someone lost their job that day.

    johndoh
    Free Member

    Had a Mk 1 Ford Escort and the gearstick would come off if you pulled at it too hard (I held it in place by jamming matchsticks into the screw fitting that had sheared).

    Still – it made for a great security device – it was once stolen from the cinema car park and we found it 300 yards down the street with the gearstick on the back seat, engine still running.

    😆

    leftyboy
    Free Member

    Broke a 456 frame by splitting a huge lump of flint one half of which jammed between the wheel and the chainstay. Ended up with the rear mech ripped off and the dropout literally straightened out horizontally!

    Ended up selling the frame to someone as a project and the first ride out on the new frame I ripped the mech off and bent the (this time replaceable) hanger whilst riding down a route we affectionally call ‘rear mech alley’. As a group of 6 riders we lost 50% of our rear mechs in a little under a mile of trail 🙂

    trail_rat
    Free Member

    diesel accelerator cable jammed in a uj as i did a 3 point turn once…….

    thought i had a runaway diesel…….

    scaredypants
    Full Member

    Wasn’t an MG was it? Happened years ago to my Dad

    nah, Marina or something IIRR – outside Dickens in Portrack/Stockton, if that helps !

    on security devices, I used to have an Astra SRi (oh yeah, ladies !!) and had to park it up at the hospital where I worked. Those things were easier to get into without a key than with one – can’t even count the number of times it was broken into (fitted a hidden immobiliser, so wasn’t nicked but they’d always smash up the steering lock etc).
    In the end I used to remove the steering wheel and fix it into the boot with a d-lock. They still broke in and then presumably sat the thinking “hang on, something’s not right”, so I used to put a sign in the window saying that the wheel had been removed.
    Then I took it for a service and when I got home the note from the garage said that they’d found the loose cover over the centre of the wheel, took it off and “fixed” the loose nut which was held on by laggy bands – wasn’t loose but certainly wasn’t torqued right down … until then. I couldn’t get the nut back off and the car was nicked & written off the next woring day 🙁

    philjunior
    Free Member

    I was once driving along, I think I had been overtaking something and only saw some debris in the middle of the road too late. I hit a plank of wood and heard it hit something on the bottom of the car, and a clicky noise followed.

    3 of 6 bolts that fastened the driveshaft in place had been removed, the other 3 were loose (got about 50 miles down the road before an opportunity to get it looked at).

    The day after an 80 mile epic, I went to swap tyres to something meatier for some rough/rocky/steep action. My rim had a crack on the brake track (it had initially been fitted on a bike with V brakes, some slight wear and then used with discs for years) almost the whole way around the circumference on both sides (must have been the box section part of the rim, as the tyre would’ve blown off otherwise).

    scaredypants
    Full Member

    One of my mates had a car whose driveshaft was tied up with string 😀

    mattbee
    Full Member

    Rear driveshaft of my Landrover lightweight dropped and dug into road after the front uj sheared. Punted the rear of the Landy up into the air and nearly rolled it.
    Ended up tying it up to the chassis to get the remaining 1/2 mile home.

    sofaboy73
    Free Member

    The electrics I had on an old Astra vrs where a little temperamental and you where never quiet sure if the button or switch you where hitting would have the desired effect. At its worst when you hit the horn it instantly turned the stereo up to full volume. I discovered this on a sunny day driving along listening to the radio with the widows open. When white van man cut me up and I expressed my displeasure via the horn and brittney spears ‘hit me one more time’ blasted out. He laughed at me and drove away whilst near by pedestrians also openly laughed

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