You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Thought id swap out the rear gear cable on my spectral this morning as it was overdue. Whip out the old cable, and feed the new one in. I assumed internally routed cables would have internal guides to the frame plug. Won't make that mistake again. Always wondered what the length of thin tubing was for that came with the bike. Now I know! half an hour of poking around with a kitchen skewer and all good.
Northwind: forks
More than once I've tried to set-up a mech using the worng shifter 😳
Pumping hydraulic disk brake lever too much when pads weren't in the callipers.
Especially when you are going riding in the Peaks the next day and you don't have any replacement brake fluid and / or a bleed kit.
Swapped out?
Cutting a brand new carbon steerer too short..
I used to 'swap out' stuff now I just replace it like we used to do a few years ago 🙂
Not quite opening the bleed nipple enough when bleeding brakes resulted in a piston hitting the floor rapidly followed by all the brake fluid.
Finding out the thread lock holding the suspension linkage bolts was stronger than the made from crumbly cheese bolts. The shop can have the trauma of sorting that out next time.
Just putting a new front tyre on the fat bike this morning, tubeless.
Had a bit of trouble seating, so inserted the inner tube and the tyre seated after waiting an hour or so.
Re fitted the tyre without the tube, fine.
Didn't put any Stans in it, looked at the wheel and tyre, and the tyre is on the wrong way around.......
Just started all over again, waiting for the tyre to seat with the tube in.
Tyre is the right way round now.
Trying to index gears with the exposed cable clamped in the stand. Got to the point I was removing the mech to find out why it was moving so slowly.
NORTHWIND NORTHWIND NORTHWIND
Cutting cable outer to length with the inner still inside it...
You know how shimano brake levers come with two different outer lengths for front and rear....
Pressing in a replacement Praxis converter on my CAAD10 wondering why it wouldn't go flush with the frame/BB shell. Anyway applied more effort to tighten the press. Still not fully in. Finally figured out I wasn't pressing it in straight and I'd squashed the collet making it unusable. Now waiting for another one to be posted through the door to get the bike back on the road. doh!!!!
Not tightening the rear skewer after building a new frame up. Taking off up the hill after showing my mate the rear wheel popped out and bent the rear triangle.
That was 27 years ago, had taken six months of saving, and I'm still traumatised.
Overtightening and wrecking a magura MT6.
Incase Northwind "misplaces" this....
[img] 
[/img]
over tightening a gxp bottom bracket.
Reinstalling the shock on Transition Patrol carbon and not realising the shock bolts are different lengths - wrongly used the longer bolt in the top mount and after one ride the bolt is slightly flared and won't fit the lower mount....doh!
Windwave don't have any replacement ones in stock....
This was on a motorbike but still relevant.
Following a stiff link on your chain and getting your finger trapped between sprocket and chain.
Building bike up, breaking it down in box, shipping overseas, unpacking and wondering why I had put the tire on the wrong way roun after fitting wheel, swap tire around, then try to fit wheel to realise that forks are the wrong way round.
Unfit tire, undo stem, turn forks around the right way, cancel first outing on bike.
Some corkers there. That fork photo is incredible!
Oh, it was definitely swapped out, not replaced. But thanks 🙂
Tyre on the wrong way doesn't count, thread is about mistakes you only make once, not 'mistakes you make every flippin time'
Mine is running road cables too tight, I broke two shifters before I realised what the problem was, luckily halfords replaced under warranty as this was in 2009 and they'd not seen a road bike before.
popping out the circlip at the bottom of the air piston leg on a pair of forks while still partially pressurised because you forgot to fully bottom the fork out while letting the air out...
result = pushrod shaped dent in ceiling a fine coating of oil over EVERYTHING nearby and an overhweliming sense of relief that your face wasn't in the firing line of the piston as it exited at eleventy three miles per hour 😯
And another fork related one...
Holding the fork by the brake arch as you let the air out of the main spring, forgetting it was a dual-air RS fork as the 100+ PSI in the negative spring now does it's best to crush your knuckles betwixt brake arch and crown at great velocity 🙁
Years ago I was replacing the bottom bracket on my first mountain bike, put cranks back on the next day we put the bikes in the car and headed up to Aberfoyle for a ride in the forest.
Took bikes off car and set off, things didn't feel right and it was only then I realised I'd put the non drive side crank in the wrong position on the splines, so pedals weren't opposing 12 o'clock/6 o'clock but 12 o'clock/3 o'clock.
Oh how I laughed.
Forgetting to tighten stem clamp bolts (I was interrupted by phone as my excuse).
Fitting forks upside down.
Fitting Manitou forks backwards.
Fitting 8 speed cassette instead of 9 speed and then spending several days trying to get the gears to index properly.
Cutting cable outer to length with the inner still inside it...
This. Paid loads of attention to getting my Rohloff cables the right way round and then 'snip'..
My first Fox Fork self service. Putting it all back together and sitting with a cup of tea smugly looking at my work wondering why the HA looks wrong.
Yep, I'd replaced the lowers backward.
Struggling to find the place on SRAM shifters that the cable goes in. Took the cover off and little cogs and springs fly everywhere. I should have stopped there but I figured I could get it back together again if I just had a working one as a reference....so very very carefully I took the cover off the other shifter....
Inflating a tyre to 1 billion psi with a compressor to seat the bead. Forgot to let any air out and it exploded in my face about an hour later while I was doing something else on the bike. Still not convinced that my hearing is back to normal
Reinstalling cranks, but at 90 degrees to each other.
Straight after putting on a brand new tyre, using a knife to remove the zip ties on a front mudguard, while a chatty mate is distracting me. FWOOOSH.
dufusdip - Member
Not tightening the rear skewer after building a new frame up. Taking off up the hill after showing my mate the rear wheel popped out and bent the rear triangle.
Oof. Done this one too 🙁
There are so many 😉
- rebuilding a headset but swapping over the top and bottom races
- Attempting to remove a sticky piston using an air line and coming far too close to burying said piston in my right eyeball
- cross threading bottom brackets
- Getting so cheesed off with a set of malfunctioning Juicy brakes that I carefully removed from the bike so I could hit them repeatedly with a hammer
- Chopping inners with outers
- Tyres the wrong way round after adding stans etc
- breaking self extractors
- Fitting a reverb the wrong way round.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. It's why I don't tend to try and fix things myself nowadays.
That NW pic tho. Makes me feel a whole lot better 🙂
Trying to index gears with the exposed cable clamped in the stand. Got to the point I was removing the mech to find out why it was moving so slowly.
This - and managing to mangle the new gear inners in the process of trying to work out why the indexing wasn't going well, thus rendering the whole exercise pointless!
I was working as a mechanic and saw my first pair of carbon Ahead MTB forks which someone had chopped-off flush with the upper-race - brought them into the shop and wondered if they were fixable....
[url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/command-post-fettling-fail ]Stupid bloody Specialized design muppetry [/url]
Paging Stoner 😉
I still can't believe I did it but last month building up the winter hardtail with a brand new transmission I thought 'the chain looks really slack' so I got the chain tool out & split the chain to what seemed a appropriate length.
The reason the chain was so slack was because I hadn't threaded it through the top jockey wheel on the mech!! 😯 DOH!!
Built a wheel without crossing the spokes (I was very, very drunk...). I needed it the next day so still rode it once and interestingly it didn't seem any difference.
On a cx bike - Routing the new rear mech inner cable over the guide on my x9 mech instead of through it but convincing myself that the resultant poor shifting in two gears was because of the campag/sram mix. for about two months...
Using a BB tool in a vice to remove the BB on my sisters BSO, Turned the frame the wrong way and bent the seat tube!
Cutting the brake hose for XT brakes at the caliper end thinking the banjo could be replaced like the Deore version.
Put the rear axle back in today after cleaning and re-greasing bearings. Realised I had left off the freehub dustcap (having removed it and the freehub to clean and re-oil it). Took the axle out, replaced said dustcap and reinstalled axle. Replaced cassette and realised dustcap was on the wrong way round! Gave up and started drinking wine.
Trying to figure out what to replace a pressfit Shimano BB with. Looking like I will just have to order like for like.
Clearly the next big mistake will be fitting a Shimano BB again.
BB30 bottom bracket and crankset installed backwards. Normally work with the bike in a stand but was doing it this time with the bike upside down. Spent a while wondering where the derailleur hanger had gone before I realized my mistake. ...
Fitted shifter cables to the wrong mechs on a road bike didn't realise until 20km into the ride... Mashed threads on a bb on a new to me frame.
There was a point where the lbs asked what I'd broken and where I was racing when I arrived on a Friday afternoon.
That northwind photo just gave me first belly laugh of 2017.
Swapping pedals in the alps to give clipless a go then realising I brought the wrong pedals (i.e. some broken eggbeaters not the new ones) so put the flats back on. Following day the poorly tightened flat pedal ripped the thread out of my carbon cranks.
After the left hand Hollowtech XT crank fell off mid-ride, I've learned it's best to check the bb shell width when swapping frames...ouchy!
Cut a new chain for myself for the first time, with bike standing on the floor (making it harder see what was going on with the lower bit of chain), only to discover the chain was not wrapped properly around the bottom bit of the largest sprocket when I decided which link to cut and was actually two links too short!
Fortunately, my botched cut was the correct length for a new 11-30 cassette, but it meant the original 11-34 was technically unsafe to use until recently (in case I very unusually selected 38/34 and ended up with a ripped off rear derailleur destroying the rear wheel spokes etc.) when I replaced the 38T chainring with a 34T Ringmaster.
Cutting the inner cable too short.... how many times.
Forgot to reset the torque wrench when tightening up a seat clamp bolt. It was in my old flat and was fixing bike on the landing. The bolt sheared off and rocketed shot out like a bullet. I say 'like a bullet' as I didn't actually see it. All I saw and heard was the smashing of the big mirror we had on the landing.....
Fitting a BB with the bike upside down, and especially when fitting the NDS plastic cup first...
Things that were learned that afternoon
1. NDS Plastic cups cross thread so easily you don't even notice that you've put it the DS when using a large adjustable wrench on the BB tool
2. That DS metal cups will cross thread the BB shell not the BB
3. BBs have no understanding of the emotional value of the frame they are about to damage
Fortunately, I only stuffed the first two/three "threads" so friendly bike shop with BB thread cutter were able to clean them out and fit the BB properly.
Threading the chain round the outside of the little tab on a rear mech, spent ages trying to work out what the funny noise was.
Removing the disc, cable tied to spokes to avoid bending the disc on a flight......
By cutting the spokes, not the cable ties.....
Threading the chain round the outside of the little tab on a rear mech
I would have listed that earlier, but this thread is for mistakes you only make [i][b]once[/b][/i].
I dont use needle nose pliers to pull tight zipties anymore after attempting to use them to tighten up a ziptie on the headtube on my hardtail...pliers didn't stay gripped to ziptie for long and their trajectory after release was down the back of one stanchion on some very new forks 😳
Threading the chain round the outside of the little tab on a rear mech
Anything else on bike - no problem, but this always has me thinking for ages and still get it wrong!
Not just me with a bad BB/thread stripping incident then 😀
fitting new bombers, drunk, cutting the steerer tube very diagonally, fortunately there was enough left to straighten up.
never drink when working on bike
Overtightening titanium bolts in a carbon stem. Just don't. It was a bugger to drill out the remainder from the other side. I mean titanium bolts. Come on! Why? And it was using a Ritchey torque drive. And it was 90 minutes before a road race. And I was lending the bike to a club mate. He rode that race with a stem 20cm to short on a bike too small!
Have a clear out of the spares boxes in the shed, think " I don't need two spare pairs of cheap flats" one pair in the bike charity box
6 months later, go to spares box to use those flats and find myself looking at two left side pedals. Bugger.
Managed to get the whole drivetrain on the non-drive side on my fixie once. Completely didn't notice, took ages to work out why I couldn't clip into the pedals 🙂
I've just come in after a long time trying to fine tune my new rear mech shifting... Was almost at the point of re stripping the cables and running them again add I was only ever getting (badly) 9 out of the 10 gears....
.. Maybe it's because Shimano designed the mech for, erm, 11 gears....
DrP