Spannering mistakes – come on, own up.

Speaking of special Allen keys, it inordinately winds me up that Brompton use a M7 bolt on their stem clamps.

And metric main frame hinge pins but imperial rear swingarm ones.

I failed to correctly align the XX of Maxxis with the valve, once, many years ago. Never lived it down.

Built up a bike and only did the pedals hand tight since my pedal spanner wasn’t to hand, intending to nip them up later.

Obviously forgot and destroyed the crank threads after about a mile.

Fitted a set of square taper cranks in the car park before a night ride. Did the crank bolts up and carefully torqued them. Then realised I’d put them on at 90′ not 180′. Crank extractor? Ahh, that’ll be at home then…

Did the ride with my wafety cranks. Didn’t really enjoy it, or the piss taking!

Did the ride with my wafety cranks

respect.

Mrs Js commuter may have had the chain threaded over the bar on the bottom jockey wheel for a good 4 months before I finally decided to investigate why it sounded rough and wasn’t shifting properly 😳

Another reason why her commuter of choice has a hub gear.

Changed chainring and pedals (and the rest of the drivetrain now I think about it) before going to the alps and didn’t tighten them properly as I wanted to ride a few hundred metres on the road when I got there to make sure it was all sound before I got everything tightened up.

I forgot.

On the ride down from Pleney into Les Gets my chain came off. Actually. No. 3 of 4 chainring bolts had rattled off and the last one had snapped the spider arm in order to escape.

Nothing fatal. Bought new bolts, fitted them, off we go.

Next day, coming down from Super Chatel, my pedal came out of the crank arm stripping the thread as it went.

Pretty fatal. Bodged it in. Finished the ride. Bought new cranks (rare as rocking horse shit in Morzine surprisingly).

60 seconds of time saving. 400e of new cranks. Bargain.

This was on top of my Reverb that broke which in turn was a replacement for my cack-handed repairs on the Joplin. I got a refund on the reverb though which paid for the replacement.

Did the ride with my wafety cranks. Didn’t really enjoy it, or the piss taking!

Fair play but they would have fallen off if you had undone the bolt and ridden them

Lower service on a pair of fox 32’s all went well as I’d done it a couple of times before, finished okay but with the lowers on the wrong way round…

Years ago I changed frames and got new rotors but completely forgot to put all the screws in the new rear rotor (only put two in) first proper downhill section it ended up being ripped off the hub resulting in some nice scaring 🙁

boriselbrus – Member
Fitted a set of square taper cranks in the car park before a night ride. Did the crank bolts up and carefully torqued them. Then realised I’d put them on at 90′ not 180′.

Did that just before a commute with some octalink ones once. Was already late before I fixed it 😀

Recently I put a new cable in for my rear derailleur. I hadn’t shifted to the correct end of the throw so that I would actually be threading the cable through the end of the lever and not just the lever body.

Spent about 10 minutes wondering what the bloody hell was going on as whenever I used the lever, nothing happened. Doh!

the first time I changed the gear cable on an X0 system I couldn’t find out how to get the cable out of the lever (no little grub screw like shimano), so I undid the enticing hex bolt underneath and the lever sort of exploded springs and ratchets everywhere. I couldn’t get it back together.

but that’s not the stupid part. I figured that I just needed to know which order the bits went together in, so I very carefully opened the left hand shifter to see which way that one was put together. boom. springs and ratchets everywhere for the second time.

I paid the LBS to fix them in the end but they never really worked properly again, expensive day in the garage

Didn’t even need tools. Loosely fitted the rear qr wheel to my Mount Vision, intending to tighten it up later…

Descending Spooky Wood the next day, got a wee bit airborne, wheel fell out and shot past me. Rear swingarm ploughed into the ground and my nads rattled off the saddle, bending the rails.

Needed new swingarm, dropout, rear mech, chain and outer chainring. Saddle immediately re-useable, nads took longer.

Ouch! 🙁

but that’s not the stupid part. I figured that I just needed to know which order the bits went together in, so I very carefully opened the left hand shifter to see which way that one was put together. boom. springs and ratchets everywhere for the second time.

Winner.

I would do this, I would immediately wonder why the hell I’d done it. I’d still do it again though.

It’s been a while since anything particularly epic, mostly because a string of expensive dumbarse errors have actually taught me not to rush things, but the two that stick in my mind the most were trying to loosen my pedals for service, but actually tightening the reverse thread. Of course, back then, some 15 years ago, I was alot stronger and less reflective, so instead of stopping and thinking about it, I managed, with the help of a big adjustable, to twist out the pedal against the thread, resulting in a new crankset being required.

The second was driving over to Mojo to collect a new CSU for my vanilla fork on Friday, for a day ride at Afan. Cue rushing home to fit it, measuring correctly and then cutting the steerer to short by cutting the wrong mark.

These are brilliant

Some of mine:

Pushed the bearings on the top link of my Blur LT from the wrong side. So when the bearing was pressed home the tool was stuck in the middle of the top linkage mounts on the frame. Had to hacksaw the bolt in the bearing tool to get it out of the frame.

A neighbour asked me to help him bleed his brakes (some ancient Giant things). A hooked up the syringes tried to push fluid up through the caliper. Pushed, pushed some more. The plastic hose shoots of the caliper and the brake fluid ejects all over the garage floor with a fair bit of force.
I hadn’t loosened the bleed nipple

Servicing my Shimano front wheel. Its a nice sunny day so I’m out on the patio in the sunshine rather than hiding in the garage
Very diligently and careful I remove each ball with a magnetic screw driver and carefully place them in my nice Park magnetic part holder.

I reach for my cuppa a knock the magnetic bowl off the garden table
36 ball bearings scatter all over the concrete slabs.

I found 34

but that’s not the stupid part. I figured that I just needed to know which order the bits went together in, so I very carefully opened the left hand shifter to see which way that one was put together. boom. springs and ratchets everywhere for the second time.

Winner.

I would do this, I would immediately wonder why the hell I’d done it. I’d still do it again though.

I have done this with RSX shifters on a road bike. Not my bike either – so I paid a bike shop to put them back together.

Back in the late 80s I decided I should change the water in my Escort radiator. I located the drain nut and merrily undid it and was quite shocked that instead of water, oil was coming out.
I had stupidly undone the oil sump nut. In my haste to stop the masses of oil leaking over my parents drive, I overtightened the sump nut, so it just span around in the socket.
I spent the next 6 months with a Tupperware container under my car everytime I parked up, and a lovely rainbow trail down the road everytime it rained.
Have stayed away from spannering cars ever since.

I’ve done the shifter taking apart thing as well. It was an ‘interesting’ 2 hours trying to put everything together again

Snapped the head off a pivot bolt on my SC Blur – probably because it didn’t need tightening

Cut a steerer tube down a touch too much and at a wonky angle

Recently purchase some new Hope brakes and made a right mess shortening the hoses, taken to LBS and admit to my tinkering and say I’ll be back next week to collect.

I took apart some Fox forks in house before I knew what ‘open bath’ meant. There are still oil stains on the carpet.

Decided to replace the gear and brake inners on my SRAM Rival equipped road bike. 15 minutes tops I thought.

They came out easily enough but it took three hours of swearing and Mole grip action to force the gear cable around the ratchet mechanism of the shifter. I finally got it there only to find the inner just wouldn’t fit into the outer.

Took the whole lot to the bike shop to complain about the rubbish inners they’d sold me. They laughed: I’d forced a 1.6mm brake inner where only 1.1mm gear inner should go.

I reach for my cuppa a knock the magnetic bowl off the garden table
36 ball bearings scatter all over the concrete slabs.

I found 34

Same on the front wheel of my CX/commuter not bothered to replace them either – 12 months now and 1500m later.

Long time ago , had a road bike that I bought second hand that had tubulars. Well got a puncture, so when I got home, thought that it cant be hard to fix a puncture. So as I knew where the flint had got in, unstitched the underside of the carcass to hook out the tube. Then used a track pump to inflate the tyre. Cue a sudden massive bulge from the tube hanging out followed by a massive bang and me becoming completely blinded. Grabbing the wall, I found the stairs and shuffled to the bathroom. After frantically washing my eyes, I began to see again. There was so much chalk in the tyres, well, there was, it isn’t know. Looked like my face had been flour bombed. The sofa and me was covered. Binned the tyre and bought a new bike…….

Fitting a Maxxis Minion on a stubborn Bontrager tubeless rim, trying to get the beads seated properly:

*pumppumppumppumppumppump*
Nope, not seated properly.
*pumppumppumppumppumppump*
Still nope.
*pumppumppumppumppumppump*
Still nope. Grr.
*pumppumppumppumppumppumppumppumppumppumppumppumpBOOOOOOM*

**** the tyre and my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.

Nearly a mile then, well done you.

12 months now and 1500m later

That wasn’t what you meant was it?

Had a pompino with a flip flop hub that I was riding on the freewheel at the time.
Needed to fix a puncture at the poorly-lit bike shed after work, at night in the winter. Very cold, so did it as fast as I could. All done – ride away, accelerate up to the junction as normal, lights changing to red so ease off on the power – WTabsoluteF!?aaaaaaaaahmebaws!!!!

Wheel put in wrong way was an unexpected introduction to riding fixed. Was thrown forward and bashed me sack on the stem but managed to keep upright.

First ever bike i had with discs, decided to drive to some trails to test it out. Stopped, got the bike out of the car boot and put the wheels on. Sprinted down the steep gravel carpark to test my shiny new brakes. Pull on both levels, front one pulled back to the bar and nothing happened so i had to use the rear to perform the biggest high speed skid and crashed my brand new bike into some wooden fencing and a gate.

I’d put the front wheel on the wrong way and the rotor was on the wrong side 😳

That little plastic retaining ring is actually necessary.

Wheel nuts on a mini – both me and my Dad assumed the other had torqued them. It shed 5 of 8 on two front wheels on the A3 before my Mum made him stop to work out what the knocking/vibration was.

Marz Z1 front forks, I was changing to oil to a lighter weight and during re-assembly couldn’t get the cartridge to go in and line up to the threads, so not thinking I pulled up on the fork brace to bring it all together. Obviously (now) this had the oppsoite effect and resulted in me quite violently ejecting all the oil out and all over my kitchen, it made for a rather slippery floor for a while after that!

Used a slightly too big drift to knock the headstock bearing out of a motorbike frame, and took a chink of the frame with it when it went 🙁 that was upsetting, but fortunately there was enough meat left to seat the new bearing ok.

Rushing to change the engine oil on my old 306 the night before a trip to france I accidentally got the wrong sump plug and emptied the gearbox oil into a washing up bowl that had been used in the garden and was full of crap. No time to get some oil so I strained it as best as I could through a pair of tights and refilled the gearbox. Did another 40k+ with no problems!

My usual one is swapping out stem and/or forks as a favour for someone and forgetting to tighten up the bolts. Last time it was a quick car park bodge for my bro and he discovered it on the first corner. Oops. Quickly tightened it up and in the second corner he discovered that the rotor on the new fork was about 5-10mm smaller and thus didn’t stop him from using the berm as the start of a 20ft step down. Luckily he’s pretty good at crash landing without serious injuries.

I also took a SRAM X9 shifter apart to see how it worked. It’s still in a little zip lock bag in my tool box waiting to be put back together – 9 years later!

Tom KP

Other day pumped tyre up ‘very hard’ up cold with a track pump with a busted pressure guage. Took bike into warm house and lent it near a radiator and went to bed.

Couple of hours later I get woken up by what initially assumed was my front door being kicked in.. Tube exploded and blew the tyre off the rim. Oops.

Tyre was ok though.

^^ There’s a vid on youtube somewhere how to put an x9 shifter back together. You WON’T be able to do it without it 😯

Opposite thread bottom bracket. Knew about the different thread direction and done it a few times before but just went into automatic mode not paying attention and trying to undo while really tightening. Putting more and more effort into it, got the breaker bar out, snapped a hex key. Hmm, oh, bugger. 😳

Never managed to get it off again. 😀

I welded a bottom bracket on back to front and didn’t notice until I had tacked the front triangle together. That sucked balls.

Only other one was when I had a sticking rear mech. Reached for the can of GT85 to free it up but grabbed the spray contact adhesive instead as the cans were almost identical. The mech was really sticking after a good spray with that!

Oh one more..

New 2nd hand frame mate brought a headset press round fitted that then were all chatting as I cross threaded the BB, many thanks to Cyclewise in Whinlatter for sorting that out.

Have done tyre thing, it blew up in the back garden spraying me with sealant and terrifying our staffie.