Spannering mistakes – come on, own up.

Badger!

A fair few recently 😳

Got the valve hole in wrong position on my carbon wheel build. Couldnt be bothered to re-build it, so its a little awkward fitting a pump to valve.

Put my oval chainring on wrong way round. lined up ok, with tab by crank, but chainring on back to front! Rode like that with chain catching chainring for months!

Put my KS link on wrong way round. It fouled the frame and made a knock, so quickly remedied, but that was pre race panic! Stupid KS link has “RS” marked on it – I thought that meant Righthand Side. No it just means Rune.

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

I’m incredibly obsessive about that – check the shell, check it again with an old BB, write LHS and RHS on the shell (not left and right, because that could mean the thread direction), fit it to the jig, check several times that I remember which side of the bike is the right side, etc.

I was bleeding a brand new set of SLX brakes after shortening the hose and struggling to get the fluid moving. I therefore gave the syringe “a little bit” more wellie and POP….fluid eveywhere and burst seals. These are still in my spares bin waiting to be fixed. 🙁

My dusty and debris covered shed floor must be made from a material with an immense gravitational field and some space time distorting properties …. possibly a black hole? Any key, tiny component will be sucked onto and then disappear into the floor …. springs and grub screws are the favourite but I am still looking for the front end of an early Marin.

With BBs and pedals I now go by the direction towards front or rear of the bike, which works whichever side you’re on. Only problem is BB is the opposite to pedals so I forget and check and double check (BB loosen towards front, pedals tighten towards the front).

Scariest was in the mid 80’s
My brother bought a 1970’s mini Clubman estate, in a hurry in the rain one dark November night. It turned out to be a bit of a dog ( yes really).
A bit later on, the idler gear between the crank and gearbox chewed it’s way through the bellhousing. We managed to get the bits very cheap and used the age old method of undoing all the gubbins and lifting the body off the subframe with engine attached to deal with it. Changed the casing, the gear and clutch. Put it all back and bled the all round drum brakes ( you can probably see where this is going….)
We went for a test drive. My mate who was helping was driving. We were bowling along and I suddenly realised he hadn’t seen the crossroads ahead where the other road had priority. ‘stop!!’ I shout, he jams on the anchors and the front left worked, really well but the front right didn’t. We executed a four wheel drift at what seemed like 60mph but was probably 15mph across the crossroads ending up facing the wrong way on the other side. Luckily there was no other traffic around.
I decided at this point we needed to have another go at bleeding the twin leading shoe fronts.

Realising that you’ve cross threaded something (normally important) is one of the most frustrating things going.

Especially because it’s always your own fault!

Halfords sell, or used to sell, a really fine polishing compound in an aerosol- really handy for fixign wee scratches. Anyway, I sometimes caught my boot on the back of the bike while climbing on, so it had a bunch of horizontal scratches, decided to do something about it. Sprayed on the polishing compound… Oh no wait, picked up the wrong can, actually sprayed it with black paint.

Another couple…

Trusting the torque wrench and Santa Cruz’s publish torque spec on a pivot bolt, hmm this surely should have clicked by now, snap! 😥

Brake fettling, bleed block in, squeezed lever for no good reason, pop. Fluid leaking out of the lever.

I once fitted new bushes and uppers to my 36s, serviced the damper, and had them back on the bike, at which point I noticed an awful lot of extra travel when the front end was lifted. Turns out the new uppers didn’t come with the circlip and washer needed for the top out spring. Had to strip the things back down again.

Not me, but a classic from work, was a lorry had the rear wheels come lose, so the foreman and another mechanic fit a brand new hub, two new wheels, along with new studs/nuts. At which point the correct torque setting is sought. After consulting with tech data, phoning the dealer, and asking those of us who normally service them, they get told 250Nm. Now given they’ve just been told 250Nm from three different sources, you’d think that would be good enough for them, but that didn’t seem tight enough in their opinion, so they decide on 300Nm, as that ‘sounded’ better.

It was quite entertaining watching the flapping unfold as they managed to pull every one of the new studs clean through the hub.

Fitting a new front brake, hose shortened, bled beautifully and all looking nice and tidy. Bike back on the ground only to realize the U-turn travel adjust was wound all the way down… Arse!

Very simple but quite expensive. Topping up antifreeze when I got to the cottage my family was staying at in Wales, very snowy christmas a few years ago. Halfway through got a phonecall from my parents who had got stuck 200 yards down the road. Anti freeze down, closed the bonnet, went and dug them out. Got on with christmas with them doing the driving.

Driving home a week later (day after boxing day) the temp warning light comes on near Swindon, pulled in at next services. Open bonnet, coolant tank cap is sitting on top of the engine where I left it, coolant level is 0. Balls.

Nursed a few teas and some cakes while waiting for engine to cool down, filled up and got on my way. Not half a mile down the motorway lose all power and instantly knew head gasket had gone. Cue me spending 3 hours on the hard shoulder freezing my nuts off (luckily had all my clothes in the car!) waiting for recovery, who took me to the next junction and left me there. Another 90 mins waiting for another van to take me back to Sussex.

I’d put the car up for sale just before Christmas, so managed to cook my nice 328i Tourer, lose £2500 selling as spares/repair (wasn’t just replacing the gasket, the head was warped), went to a breaker in the end. 🙁

Me and my mate are about 11 and “fixing” our bikes in his front yard.
We take the nuts of the front wheel off my Grifter,but we can not remove the front wheel.
At this point the local bully and his cronies turn up and decide to take my bike.
At this point his great wheelie skills met karma.
I now know both what a 13 year olds boys face looks like when he is mono wheeling and the front wheel falls out of the forks and what happens when you touch the front wheel down without a wheel.

Changed the horrible un-sprung paddle clutch plate back to a standard (ish) plate on my elderly 944 turbo. 4 days of eating rust and skinned knuckles. The whine of the release bearing I failed to change at the time irritates a touch every bloody time I press the pedal down.

Whilst swapping components from one frame to another, donor on the work stand, receiver upside down on the lawn, BB out of donor.

For some reason popped the NDS plastic cup in first, using the BB tool and large spanner I’d just used to remove it, all good. Shout from kitchen, dinner ready in twenty mins, better get a move on. Pop the BB in, seems tighter than expected, more grease and back to the big spanner, doesn’t seem to line up once being tightened. Out again and back in, again with the big spanner, dinner getting closer, better get this finished…

At this point, the cold creeping realisation of what I’d done swept over me…cross threaded the BB shell on my owned since new (and at the time 12yrs old) “cold dead hand” ’98 Kilauea.

Joined the Sunday morning “please fix my stupidity queue” at the LBS. One week later after careful application of BB threading tool, damage undone.

Had to drill a seized bottle cage bolt out of its boss in my carbon frame. Ended up damaging the insert so had to drill the whole thing out but the bottom half fell into the frame where it would have rattled like a bastard. So I squirted load of expanding foam in there. Sorted.

Oh yeah, once lost damping on my Pace and correctly surmised that the damping rod had become disconnected from the piston. However I was not clever enough to realise the implications of this as I carefully undid the top of the leg without having let the air out. I was quite lucky to end up with a ruined shirt and a face like a bukkake ritual, had to feel my was to the bathroom. Could have been badly injured.