Ride Ending Mechanicals

I can’t remember the last time I had a ride ending mechanical.
Had one today though.
Less than two miles and this happened.
Ride Stopper. by multispeedstu[/url], on Flickr
Ride Stopper 2 by multispeedstu[/url], on Flickr
Bugger. Still could have been worse as it happened on a gentle climb not far from the car.
Glad it didn’t let got on any of the descents we had planned for the ride. Would have been well hairy.

Feel free to chip in with your tales of broken stuff that’ stopped your fun.

Yea, snapped pedal axle, cue lots of coasting.

Happened on Monday for me, the bracken had grown a bit since I last went for a ride and I cut one (now blind) corner a little too tight forgetting there was a stump on the apex, I twisted the mech and bent the cage which went into the spokes, luckily it only broke one spoke but that did pierce the rim tape so also got a puncture for good measure.

Looking at replacement parts and finding that an xtr mech is 50% more expensive than when I bought it years ago is a little frustrating!

Noticed my DT Swiss freehub with 52tooth star was ghost pedalling, took it apart and cleaned out the winter gunk and reassembled with some grease, rode around in the street fine, drove an hour to ride and on the way up to the first descent it gave up engaging and wouldnt pedal, cue back to the car and a sulky drive home.

4-5 years for me… took out a mech on a tree stump.

Only once, and on a fixed gear !

I was doing a 20 mile commute home (short distance was 6) and I was about the furthest from home (10 miles) when the rear wheel exploded going round a roundabout. 120 PSI and skidded to a stop.

The rim was worn, and it blew 30% of the braking surface off. Had to phone home for the Team car (roof rack on).

To make matters worse, I realised the rack was ‘locked’ and the key is on my car keys, not my wife’s. Even more complicated in that MrsF had to bring the kids.

I had to remove both wheels, pannier rack and full guards to get it in the boot.

I went through a period of smashing mechs which always seemed to happen at the farthest point from the car. That hasn’t happened on my current bike, but I did have the circlip on the base of my reverb break and end my ride – apparently my model is prone to it.

Temporary one.

Set off one freezing morning on a commute (geared bike). Coasted down the road towards the main road, and started to pedal, nothing. Freewheel forward and back. Wouldn’t work.

Wheeled bike back home, got changed to drive in, bloody thing was working. I’d washed the bike the night before and left it in the garage. Just a bit of moisture had frozen on the coast down the hill. Lesson learned, washed bikes came in overnight in cold weather (or weren’t washed).

Stick in mech in bottom gear on climb -> shift into spokes -> 4 snapped spokes.
On the half mile push (didn’t even try sitting on it) to the road to be rescued the wheel had got so far out of true that it wouldnt turn in the frame.

Busted freehub at FOD downhill turned my bike into a fixie. Had to ride down the fireroad sat down, legs out like a 5 yearold. Painful.

Mech shook itself to pieces (bottom bolt and jockey wheel out) on the Pleney black. After a fruitless search for the missing bits, took it all off, and headed down to the Bec Jaune for a beer, no pedalling required. Suspension worked really well with no mech or chain, I want a gearbox bike!

First ride on a dt swiss wheel and stripped the freehub ratchet teeth 10 miles from home, at least it was mostly downhill all the way back. Pretty annoyed at the time for a brand new wheel but the replacement ratchets have lasted 3 years and still going

I’ve got a lot of bad luck (or huge fat person inevitability, more likely) with free hubs, as for many others it seems. Worst one, which wasn’t technically ride ending, was right at the far end, and top, of a ride run the Pentlands. Freehub made terrible noises then the inside bearing shat itself. it would not pedal at all, but would turn. I had to coast/runner bike all the way back, with hub slowly grinding itself into a useless paste by the end. (hope warranty replaced tbf).

Pedal axle snapping only once, that was a bigger pain in the ass than the free hub as it was after an 800m ascent, and I clipped a rock after the first 100m on the descent. shite!

Also lunched 2 x rear wheels, and 2x mechs and mech hangers by… putting on a too-short chain on a full sus. Twice. First gear to get up a hill, bump causes suspension to compress and lengthen and… mangle crunch crunch. Shite! Twice.

@singlespeedstu what happened, sheared bolt, debonded, can’t see anything broken, looks like it fell apart?

Last night it took 3 ‘worms’ to seal the holes in the sidewall of my tyre when I caught a sharp rock.

Luckily it held as it was dark by the time I got home, after the obligatory pub stop 🙂

The last one for me was well over 20 years ago!

Was coming down the fast descent after the Gap in the Brecon Beacons on my old hardtail at ridiculous speed and managed to properly case the rear wheel on a rock, pinch flatting immediately and shredding the tyre (IRC Mythos XC, that should date it!). By the time I had stopped the rim was also toast, not good when you’ve got a HS33 on the back so can’t easily release it like a V-brake so you can push! Cue a long walk to the nearest house with someone home (had a mobile but no signal back then, full 4g everywhere now!) and call my mum out to fetch me.

@singlespeedstu what happened, sheared bolt, debonded, can’t see anything broken, looks like it fell apart?

Input shaft on drive side of Ebike motor snapped clean off.
The bit in the crank arm should be attached to the rest of the splined shaft.
Old motor is out and on its way back for replacement
Big shout to the boys at Race Co Cycles in Stourbridge.
Warranty sorted while I was rolling back to the car.
Top service

Less than two miles and this happened.
Ride Stopper. by multispeedstu, on Flickr

Not the first time that has happened to a Levo or Kenevo

Race Co and Berkshire Cycles are the best for sorting Spesh warranties out quickly

My last ride ending mechanical was my road bike’s Di2 rear mech giving up the ghost

It decided the mech’s motor had had enough and refused to engage even after checking it hadn’t gone into crash recovery mode

Cant complain as i got 2000 miles out of it and only paid £5 for it off Facebook market place! (was missing the jockey wheels and cage and was crash damaged)

Now sitting in the spares box and my OG Di2 rear mech is back on

I remember back in the late ’80’s my first time up Glen Tilt only 4 miles in one of us broke his saddle and rather than head home did the full run,Glen Tilt another Glen and then Glen Feshie maybe 50 miles off road with his bum in the air and eventually took the post out to save a risky extra injury
We were tough back then , 18speed, no discs, suspension, xt thumbies and saddle not essential

Had a few.. years ago, top of the old tramway on the gap road route the seat bolt snapped off my Easton ea50 seat post. Saddle now not attached. Cue a very careful ride back to the campsite

Snapped a mech off riding along a fairly flat track on the long mynd ride.

5 spokes just snapped, again on a very innocent climb in the quantocks.

I don’t know what it is about seemingly innocent tracks wrecking my bike…

Kind of mechanical, with added interest.
Fell off and herniated the back, could hardly walk, and was by myself, so had to try to push the bike back. going through the country lanes I picked up thorns from a recent hedge cut and had to somehow change a puncture using the spare tube. Horribly painful. Was a good fall, worthy of you tube how not to end up when offroading, rolled on the front wheel before flipping over. Nearly held it. nearly 😆
.
Then I got a 2nd puncture, in the tyre i’d just repaired though the white pain.
F*** it, just kept going the 5 miles home. 2nd tyre got punctured while pushing. Seems I picked the day the farmer cut all those hawthorn hedges scattering thorns everywhere.
In the days when we didnt have mobile phones.

Day 4 of pennine bridle way after settle on way to Kirkby Stephen my gears were all over the place, wouldn’t stay in first and bike felt wierd and a bit flexy. I thought it was my saddle bag moving making it feel unstable etc.

Cleared off a load of mud on my salsa horsethief designed for adventure and found this.

Not had many. I broke a rear mech so rode chain-less for an afternoon. That was quite interesting. Try to keep as much speed as possible then jump off and push as soon as it stalled. Snapped pedal ended a ride. I snapped a rear axle recently and didn’t actually notice. The chain fell off a couple of times, which is unusual with a NW chainring, but I shrugged it off and carried on. The QR kept the whole thing together and it rode just fine. When we first went big mountain riding, many years ago, we had a morning of ripping valves until we ran out of spare inner tubes.

Yesterday for me, got to mallards pike in the Forest of Dean, go to change gear when pulling away from the car and the bolt that holds the shifter to the brake lever sheared off.

Went to both local shops and they had no suitable bolts so had to drive home again.

I failed to fix a puncture for the first time in years (actually probably the first puncture I’ve been aware of in years).

Observations;
– Whatever sealant Hunt use to set up tubeless might as well be milk.
– Attacking a 35 mm width tyre with a tubeless repair maggot applicator designed for chunky MTB tyres is hard work.

I am pretty sure my second attempt would have worked, but I then managed to screw my second & final CO2 canister onto the inflator thing with the valve still open. Instant very cold hand and no way of inflating my now fixed tyre.

I got a bit close to a verge on my road bike a couple of years back – managed to get a branch tangled up in my rear wheel which smashed my rear mech to pieces.
It was dark and i was a bit shaken up so didn’t attempt to bodge a single speed conversion to get me home.

Not for years, but from what I can remember I’ve had 3.

1x folded up wheel
1x shattered chain ring
1x slashed tyre

Two rear mechs in six months. They’re getting harder to replace due to stock issues.

The last time I had a mech snap, the ride was all steep up followed by steep downs so I decided to push / run up the hills and cruis down chainless. It was still a good ride. In fact, it was only the flat cruise back to the car (1 mile or so) where I was the slowest rider in the group 💪

Before that, can’t remember. I think bikes must’ve have gotten a lot more reliable.

On a trail in Verbier… Stu knows the one. Nice contouring path in the woods leads you unsuspectingly into Euro hop madness of awful corners. Think he called it Kiddie Fiddler but on my map it was called Chateau-Crie.

https://www.trailforks.com/trails/chateau-crie/

Anyway, rock flicked up out of nowhere and smashed my mech.

Easy enough to remove and I had a spare back at the campsite but I had no chance of even attempting that trail. Or if I’m being honest, my mechanical helped disguise my technical inability to ride the trail 😉

Think he called it Kiddie Fiddler

Also known as Jackass.
The Kiddie Fiddler name was because it gently leads you into the wood then **** you good and proper. 😮

In no particular order.

Carbon road rim disintergrated when braking when quite a few KMs from home.
Carbon road rim delaminated when braking hard down a mounrtain in the Dolomites. Coming down the rest of the mountains was interesting only being able to use the fron brake!
Numerous rear mechs broken off in cross races.
My first On One Inbred frame snapped at the head tube on one ride in the mountains. Que a long walk back.
Seat post and frame broke off in the mountains in Taiwan on my old Giabt hardtail. (Was actually able to ride back on that one).
Snapped a pair of RS Judys in a crash in a MTB race back in the day.
Snapped a set of RaceFace Turbines.
There are more but I can’t be bothered to write about them.

The (admittedly degraded and starting to play up) pawls in my Hope freehub shattered on a particularly cold night back in Feb. Luckily not far from home. Roll down the hill, then drop the saddle and hobby horse up the road to home.

Had a freehub fail in New Mexico many years ago. Was at the start of a group ride and there was a mobile Yeti hire truck in the car park, so that sorted the ride. However, I was in the US for 3 weeks riding all over the place. One of the locals on the ride, who I’d never met before, leant me a spare rear wheel and just said post it back before you fly home! Such a generous guy!

snapped KS lev seatpost

Pah! minor issues you lot.
Torridon 2011. Discovered I had a slow leak on my rear tubeless tyre which appeared to be from the sidewall, I realised this somewhere near Coulags & we still had to get back to Annat, but I kept blowing it up to keep me going. In our eagerness to get back before dark we pushed on & I managed eventually to shag it completely on a drain gully. It was at this point I decided I should put a tube in. Which of course I should’ve tried ages before. It wouldn’t have mattered cos I couldn’t get the lockring off the valve stem to put a tube in anyway. The tyre was as flat as a fart so I pushed. & pushed & pushed till it got dark & we couldn’t see shit. We hadn’t expected to be out so long & didn’t have a torch between us. We lost the trail above Annat & I knew we were near some rocky crags but couldn’t see them & didn’t fancy going any further in case we came to more grief.
Cue, Torridon Mountain Rescue. It was either that or sit on a rock slab all night (in March, the week before the clocks went forward) Lucky we had a signal. We bunged the rescue team £60 when they turned up with 2 headtorches, at least it filled the Landy with diesel.
What a pair of prats we were for not going FULLY equipped on a ride like that.

I think I win.

This is the most recent. Somehow managed to shear all four chainring bolts. 🙂

I’ve had loads, but this was probably the most catastrophic.

Now the thread is getting in to it.
Pics of destroyed kit while sad also bring a smile at the same time.

Wow that’s a good one. Glad I’m not the Whyte marketing team, there’s no doubt what frame that is.

Actually that reminds me that I snapped a chainstay quite recently. I was just about able to ride home, though.

Worst one was years and years and years ago. Used to ride out from Macclesfield where I were a yoot. Pre mobile phone. Went over to goyt valley, somewhere around fernilee resr I badly buckled my Dave hinde campagnolo rear rim.
No choice but to lift the bike & walk towards home up to the cat & fiddle and hope they would let me use the phone. After a good hour+ walking got to the pub, the bastards wouldn’t let me use the phone! (Or denied they had one, cant remember which)
Ended up walking all the way back into Langley to my mates house. Took ages! Got bollocked by parents!

On non- ride ender (but best bodge). Maybe 15 years ago. Went out before work down the meanwood valley trail. Snapped the frame around the top tube/seat tube weld on my Kinesis maxlight.
Lashed it back together with an inner tube.
Handling was a bit interesting but I got to work on time 😁