[Closed] Spannering mistakes - come on, own up.

My first road bike in about 20 years, with one o'them fancy octalink BBs

Didn't realise there were 2 different sizes/depths of splines. Took some bloody tightening on, I'll tell you ! 😳

Fitting a Fool roofbox to a bike.

I may have been replacing cables in the road bike, it might have been past beer o'clock on a Friday. It did take about 30 mins of playing with barrel adjusters the next day to accept that I'd put connected the front shifter to the rear mech...

Putting a 1/2 shaft back into the axle of a D Series Ford truck a lot of years ago, face fit/flange/axle = 6 blood blisters.

Hahah, brilliant!

I'm generally pretty good as I've done quite a bit of self servicing on my cars over time..

I try to avoid alcohol but i still do stupid stuff like fit tyres backwards if I've had a few ales!

Many years ago rebuilding a Suzuki X7 engine,first time I used a torque wrench & thinking to myself these crankcase bolts are getting tight but the wrench still hasn't clicked followed by a bolt snapping 😯
I hadn't realised the wrench only 'clicks' one way...

On the snapping almost spookily in timing the banjo fitting on an original Hope Mini Mono snapped under my spanner just as it would become impossible to get to the LBS in time the night before heading off to meet some mates for a ride...

(thanks to the Guys in the old bike shop in Glentress who uttered the magic words go grab some breakfast we will see what we can do)

There's just something about On Ones, I find it hard to tell which way up they go

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You fud 🙂

Despite being reasonably handy i am banned from fitting pedals to bikes. I have stripped the threads on 2 brand new cranksets and managed to turn a pedal the wrong way to take off so hard the insert started spinning...

rode 10 miles in this configuration

Strong work indeed. 🙂

Bleeding front Shimano brake. Syringe connected to caliper, funnel thingy on lever.
Pushing fluid through, got a fair bit of resistance. Assumed it was down to narrow bore of syringe/pipe. Only when fluid started pissing out of the lever main seal that I realised the funnel was in the rear brake lever...

I've done the rear gear cable to front mech thing before too, using the same length in nets for both and running them both to the under bb cable guide before connecting to mech. I always do one at a time on any bike with a front & rear now...

I did see a mate put a new chain round the large ring & largest sprocket on cassette to set chain length. Shortened it and then proceeded to join it in situ without bothering with the rear mech...

Kangaroo cranks on square tapers more often than i care to admit.

I might have bought a Superstar mini Torque wrench last year and in order to "test it" went to adjust the magura MT4 brake levers on my new electric bike. The brake levers are held in place by a proprietary bolt/nut thing with a torx hole in it.
With the torx wrench on the lowest setting I kept tightening, waiting for the click. It never clicked and I might have wrecked the bolt.
Lesson is that Superstar mini-torque wrenches have a head that flops a few degrees, and don't go "click" at the correct torque.
[I am normally pretty good at spanner stuff, and prefer to break my own stuff rather than friends!].

Re fitted the slide to my Gilera moped upside down many decades ago. It ran! Same bike also ran backwards when the timing was a touch out. Last night I dropped a nipple into a rim. Took nearly an hour before it came out. Two minutes later I did it again. 10 minutes this time

Using some needle nose pliers to pull the end of a ziptie that was holding on a brake hose...needle nose pliers slipped and jerked back scrapping down the back of the stanchion on my 2 ride old Rebas 😥

One Thursday night at work, the last job before we knocked off for a long weekend, I was tasked with changing a power take off shaft on a tornado. Got the old shaft out and new one fitted, and the engine dry cranked in record time. Tools away, happy days, quickly get the paperwork done and that's us done...
Upon looking at the paperwork, I turn to my supervisor pointing at the words right hand, on the paperwork, yep you guessed it we had changed the left hand one. Tools back out, new on off, old one refitted, then right hand one changed as it should be, 2 engines dry cranked and tools away.
This time we knocked half hour off the original time, but still, our early finish was right out the window

Dropped bottom headset bearing out of frame while swapping forks over without realising

Rode all of W2 at Afan and wondered why it was steering so strangely.

The three photos that have accompanied this thread have caused keyboard/tea interface.

Do carry on.

When you take "3 cross" literally. 😳

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I once put a tyre on the wrong way around.

Snapped the stud off the bottom of a Talas cartridge in a pair of Fox 36's by over tightening it after a service. I let the LBS fit the replacement.

Also, didn't refit the bolt that holds a square taper crank back on after fitting a new bb. Very surprised that the crank stayed on for 15 miles before falling off.

This is NW and I claim my five pounds 🙂

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A special type of genius to do it twice! My pantheon of mechanical mistakes is far too large to explain here. I did once 'service' some juicy brakes with a mallet. They didn't work before, they didn't work afterwards but by god I felt better.

First bike I built for myself as a kid, with parts bought out of MBUK. Bottom bracket was a bit stiff to get in, so just used a very long pole on the spanner. Only when it was in did I realise I'd put it in backwards, cross-threading all the way.

Still worked for years, though.

Ooh I'm good at this. Retaped new road bars before putting the brake levers/shifters back on. Makes it very easy to get a nice even wrap.

When converting my old bike to single-speed, I slid the spacers onto the freehub, tightened up the lock nut then realised I hadn't put the cog on.

I hadn't put the cog on.

Oh, that's evil. Like a reveal chess move. You slap your forehead, and chuckle, and say to yourself, "ah well, I'll just take the lock nut off and...."

...Boom! It hits you.

Laughing quite hard at some of these.

I hadn't put the cog on.

Oh, that's evil. Like a reveal chess move. You slap your forehead, and chuckle, and say to yourself, "ah well, I'll just take the lock nut off and...."

...Boom! It hits you.

A lot of swearing and a set of mole grips finally rectified the situation. Well, the mole grips did, I'm not sure the f-bombs really did much to help.

Sounds like a job for All The Mole Grips. Give me a large enough number of mole grips and a place to stand and I will slightly ovalise the earth.

Managed to ride afew miles wondering what the rattling noise was before realising I'd threaded my new chain through my new mech wrong.

Fitting a new pair of very rare 1" threadless white brothers forks, fitted crown race, all headset parts a few spacers marked and cut the steerer put the forks in......forgot to include the stem when I measured the steerer 😳 steerer 11/2 too short, non removable crown!

Trying to bleed a hateful set of Juicys a couple of years ago with a mate.

I'm at the calliper end with one syringe, he's at the lever end with another - I'm pushing, nothing, double check clamps open, push, pull the lever, nothing swear at it, push some more - "these are ****ed" which was pretty much the last excuse I needed to buy something else when it dropped.

I was on the front calliper, he was on the rear lever.

Square taper bottom brackets & crank extractors. Glad to see the back of them.

building up a road bike, first time with GXP (on road) measured BB shell 68. took spacers to space shell to 73 (as you do with mtb).

tightened cranks they're binding. stripped down rebuilt (2 or three times.) took me a good day to figure out that i needed to remove a pair of spacers!

there is no 73 shell on road. 😳

6 months with my chain incorrectly through the new rear mech, rubbing on the metal tab. Which then fell off in my hands.

Cross threaded a newly restored old school bmx frame bb shell.

Various times forgetting to torque up car wheel nuts.

My favourite was putting a woodruff key into the main crank pulley incorrectly, on a freshly rebuilt Peugeot mi16 engine that had been fettled by cosworth. Pulley slipped, and smashed a couple of valves into my shiney New head.

Jerry...words fail me!

🙂

i always seem to find that special allen key. The one thats been made undersize so that it looks like its a good fit when you start removing it and then all of the sudden rounds off the inside of the bolt.

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

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!

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*

****ed 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.
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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.