silly maintenance mistakes.

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!

I have also done that.

I have alo tried to stop a wheel spinning by grabbing the rotor.

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!