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klunky front end on my simple (for the last year or so).... headset tight check. Yep headset cap was tight, tight to the top of the steerer tube insufficient spacerage! (I did do the rock the bike with finger on the lower headset bearing and fork crown thing but couldn't feel any play 🙁 )
I once bled my brakes and had the syringe attached on the back caliper and the funnel attached on the front lever, took me a wee while to work out why it wasn't working...
Surely i am not the only one!!!!
Marzocchi Dirt Jam Pros use the lower legs as part of the air spring. Don't pressurise the air spring to try and stop the foot nut spinning.
Yeah, I’ve done the brake bleed with front lever, back caliper thing. Blew the seals...
None of these are bad enough to warrant a T-shirt being made, yet...
trimmed the fork steerer with the starnut still in it wondering why it was so difficult to cut.
[TANNOY]
Northwind to the forum, please
[/TANNOY]
Stabbing myself in the face with a chisel whilst trying to remove a star fangled nut when drunk falls into the stupid and maintenance categories.
Fork lowers on the wrong way round after a service - I like to think I was ahead of the curve testing short / negative offsets.
I once watched a friend trying for 5 minutes+ to jam his rear wheel in his frame the wrong way round
eldest_oab tried to fit a pedal on the inside of the crank...
Sprayed caustic soda all over the garage during bout of stuck seatpost removal. The follow-up investigation appeared to conclude that the bung I'd fashioned from an old Oury grip to seal the swan-off open end of the seatpost proved insufficient and exploded. I'd thought the BB being removed would provide adequate ventilation for the reaction, but apparently not. Luckily for me, I'd evacuated the garage to make coffee while the chemicals got to work. I returned to a scene of devastation in which my beloved Bird Zero had taken the brunt of the blast. Emergency evacuation to the back garden with a hosepipe minimised the damage to a few stains on the anodised bits. I hadn't noticed my old road bike also got a soaking and today bears patches of raw aluminium on its cranks and rims.
I didn't get the seatpost out that day, but I like to think I may have at least loosened it.
Moral of the story: always get a grown-up to help you.
There's this old chestnut…
Surely i am not the only one!!!!
No sir not me, never ever done that honest .....🤪🤡
Yeah I’ve done the old front lever, rear calliper thing.
Frankly the rest of the list is endless. It’s not that I’m clumsy or stupid, I mean 99% of it is following a guide or YT vid, no my failing is trying to cram too much in too little time and then panicking / rushing and breaking something. Even now I’m waiting for a slide hammer to arrive by post to replace some bearings I damaged by over tightening. The correct plan will be to wait till Love Island comes on and the kids are in bed and I’ve got hours to do a 30 min job, but my usual MO is to pop home lunchtime and do a 30 min job in 30 mins, rush it, get into a panic and break something.
Mine is always tyres. I get it all set up so it goes on in the right direction but some how manage to get it the wrong way once its on.
Fork lowers on the wrong way round after a service – I like to think I was ahead of the curve testing short / negative offsets.
done this one.
This one time, I put my the tyres back on and didn't align the logo perfectly with the valve. What a fool
Only this year!!!!
Rounded a crank arm bolt when fettling a creaky bb. Screw extractors I bought didn’t work ,so I set to drilling it out carefully. Not carefully enough ,as I became “distracted” & didn’t drill completely true, cue a ruined crank arm. Soft lad.
And in the bastid end it was a creaky chainring bolt. Aaagghhhh.
Not bike related but
Sink blocked, so basin underneath and started undoing at the ubend, all ok, Water flooding into basin, basin filling up quickly, so in a panic I poured it back into the sink ..................
Simple one for me..
How hard could a cup and cone headset be....
Didn't catch the fork on the way out after reaching for a mallet.. Ouch..
I regularly feed the chain through the RD, on the wrong side of the plate between the jockey wheels
I regularly feed the chain through the RD, on the wrong side of the plate between the jockey wheels
I was reading this thread with a smug sense of superiority until I got to this one. I think it's a deliberate design feature - I can't work out what the plate you have to feed to one side of actually does anyway. And I'm sure different mechs put the little plate in different places just so at the end of a long job when you can't think clearly it all goes wrong wrong wrong.
The person who cut his dropper post down to fit frame still wins the top prize for me 🙂
Ran the BB face/chase tool through my new frame.... Wrong side in.
Recently I put all the pawls and springs into a Hope freehub the wrong way around.
Also managed to spray myself in the face (and eyes) with IPA whilst looking down through a brake caliper whilst spraying upwards.
Fitted tubeless tyre to Crank Bros Sage DH rear wheel but it wouldn't seat properly so left it at high pressure whilst working on the front waiting for it to ping. Sun crept round the side of the house and started heating the wheel up, I'd got my back to it and forgotten about it, the dog was snoozing on the lawn with his feet in the air by the wheel.
There was a loud bang and all I could hear was a whistling noise (like in the war films when they've had a bomb go off next to them). The dog was now looking terrified and had seemingly teleported himself instantly across the garden in a nano second. Sealant had blown up the side of the house, the rear cassette and free wheel had been shocked off the hub and the pawls were now in the lawn and the tyre was badly deformed.
I may have done this again a decade later but this time the study/bike repair room took the brunt of the blast.
[TANNOY]
Northwind to the forum, please
[/TANNOY]
I think he's currently in a van driving home from the Megavalanche, so he's unlikely to hear you.
The brake bleeding mistake I've made is doing it from the lever down, (old style) without putting a spacer block between the pistons. One piston out and oil all over the floor.
Non-bike - refilling my van engine oil forgetting to put the sump plug back in. Luckily the catch pot was large and still under the engine, but basically poured about 3 litres of synthetic straight trough into the dirty used stuff.
Not a mistake so much as a really dumb habit. Anyone else do this?
Whenever I make a minor adjustment on any of my bikes I always put the tools away before I test by riding up & down the street. Then have to get the tools out again to just tweak that adjustment once again. I never seem to learn to leave the tools out until I know I'm happy with the new set-up.
I was reading this thread with a smug sense of superiority until I got to this one. I think it’s a deliberate design feature – I can’t work out what the plate you have to feed to one side of actually does anyway. And I’m sure different mechs put the little plate in different places just so at the end of a long job when you can’t think clearly it all goes wrong wrong wrong
Guilty.
I'd even done a 10 mile ride and hadn't noticed, it was only after thinking out was a bit noisy did I realise what I'd done. The chain lube must have aided the chain running over the tab.
Gotta be noisy that.
>putting your tools away before you have tested it rode the bike up the road<
Guilty as charged...more then a few times..
100mph
Member
The person who cut his dropper post down to fit frame still wins the top prize for me
Was that someone on here??😳
Non-bike – refilling my van engine oil forgetting to put the sump plug back in. Luckily the catch pot was large and still under the engine, but basically poured about 3 litres of synthetic straight trough into the dirty used stuff.
That reminds of the time I did the first oil change on my old, new-to-me, Volvo 240. Got confused CW confused with ACW on account of being upside down 😳. Stripped the thread and got the plug stuck. Tried everything to get it out non-destructively. Ended up hacksawing the head off, drilling a hole off-centre and spinning the stump into the sump. Then I partially dropped the sump (full removal means removing a chassis crossmember, or unbolting the oil pump through the gap) and spent hours lying on my back fishing through the 1" gap with a magnet in a pastic bag on the end of a bit of wire til I hooked it out.
Fitting an fsa pressfit bottom bracket converter, got it all the way in before realising 68mm converter in 73mm frame wasn't clever.
Youngest son fitted square taper cranks at 90 degrees instead of 180 on his jump bike, couldn't see what he'd done wrong till told to try riding it.
I was reading this thread with a smug sense of superiority until I got to this one. I think it’s a deliberate design feature – I can’t work out what the plate you have to feed to one side of actually does anyway. And I’m sure different mechs put the little plate in different places just so at the end of a long job when you can’t think clearly it all goes wrong wrong wrong
Guilty.
I’d even done a 10 mile ride and hadn’t noticed, it was only after thinking out was a bit noisy did I realise what I’d done. The chain lube must have aided the chain running over the tab.
I did this and raced a week-long MTB race in the North-Indian Himalayan foothills before realising!
Also many years ago while servicing some big upside-down DH forks, I poured a large amount of expensive oil in before refitting the drain cap at the bottom...
got a puncture at bpw
turned the bike upside down
and fixed the puncture on the wrong wheel
Nothing too bad, stripped many a thread tightening or loosening the wrong way when I've been working upside down or back to front.
Non-bike – refilling my van engine oil forgetting to put the sump plug back in. Luckily the catch pot was large and still under the engine, but basically poured about 3 litres of synthetic straight trough into the dirty used stuff.
My brother managed to put a liter of coolant straight into his engine. Luckily he realised what he done as soon as he'd finished pouring, followed by a hasty phone call to me to help him with an oil change!
Ah, so many - having to saw off Raceface cranks was a highlight, but probably the stupidest and definitely the most frustrating was trying to lace a front wheel without knowing spokes in the same wheel are different lengths. You can imagine the fun trying to get nipples onto spokes that seem like they’re gonna reach... but... just... won’t. Did my nut in that. Learned from it though. Well, til next time anyway.
I did this and raced a week-long MTB race in the North-Indian Himalayan foothills before realising!
Mine was only a tiny bit noisier than normal, easy to do and not easy to spot! 😁
Don't worry Flashy. I kept a link for such occasions as Northwind not being here...
I've tightened up a cassette lock ring without puting the cassette on...
...twice.
And headbutted a top tube when undoing some serious wedged on square taper cranks.
eldest_oab tried to fit a pedal on the inside of the crank…
Brilliant 😂
I opened this thread to post that I had done exactly the same thing (about a month ago)
Quite possibly on eldest_oab’s old Bike ?? 🤔👍
<My brother managed to put a liter of coolant straight into his engine. Luckily he realised what he done as soon as he’d finished pouring, followed by a hasty phone call to me to help him with an oil change!>
Work in a garage and the worst I've seen is someone tried to bleed rear brakes with the pipes clamped off then unclamped with loose bleed nipples and and cylinders failed dumping all the fluid and lost the brakes completely... As you can guess full rear brake rebuild.. High labour, high cost..
Some good ones on here.
I’ve done the pedal on wrong side of crank, flummoxed me for a good minute how it was catching the frame.
I also cut a dropper post wire down and fitted it, the realised I’d not put the cable through the internal routing.
Best one is putting a new dropper behind the car while I put the bike on the roof to take to the shop to have it fitted, forgot to pick it up and put in car and duly reversed over it.
I have carefully measured, re-measured and marked with a scratch line a fork steerer prior to cutting it down.
Set it up in the vice, got the hacksaw, lined up with the mark and cut the fork steerer.
...only to find that I'd cut to another random scratch further down the steerer, leaving it at least 20mm too short to even go through the frame.
That's a mistake I'll only make once.
Fitted an 8 speed cassette to a 9 speed bike. Took several days to figure out why the middle gears just would not index.
Was fitting a new stem and had to answer the phone before I was quite finished. Came back and forgot that I hadn't tightened it all up. Took it for a test ride, made it half way down the alley, but then got to the bit with a hard right turn. Turned the bars but just plowed straight into the fence. Was very glad I found the problem without serious injury.
Thanks, Josh. I'm sure he'd appreciate that.
We've all left the front wheel behind the car then reversed over it, yeah?
Luckily it was an old 26er so I got another for a tenner.
1st ride out this year in the Lakes on the Loughrigg Loop i noticed an annoying squeal/squeak coming from the rear wheel.
Got back that night and decided to try and sort the problem with GT85.
Thought it might be the jockey wheels so gave them a bit of a squirt.
Then thought maybe it was the hub, so tipped the bike upside down on it's saddle and bars and sprayed in between the hubs and qr's and left it hoping it might do the trick.
Wasn't till the morning when i had a little lap in Glenridding car park that i realised that the GT85 had dripped down onto my brake pads and contaminated them resulting in zero stopping power.
The problem was we were due to climb up to the top of Helvellyn that day and come back down again.
not a problem going up but definitely an issue on the descent.
So at the top of Helvellyn I had to try and remove the oil with a combination of sand paper from a puncture repair kit and alcohol wipes from the first aid kit, much to my riding buddies amusement.
Never again........possibly......
We’ve all left the front wheel behind the car then reversed over it, yeah?
Nope, but I did leave a very expensive wheel leaning against a wall and drove home. 3Hrs I went back not expecting to find it, but it was there!
Not left a wheel in the car park but have left a Garmin in the middle of a car space in Afan.
Realised 20 minutes later after returning to our campsite, got a lift back to the car park expecting it to be gone but yep it was still there also with people still milling around too.
Lucky really.
Managed to route the brake hose around a rear spoke and took a minute to realise that it wasn't a dodgy brake that was stopping the wheel from rotating properly.
We’ve all left the front wheel behind the car then reversed over it, yeah?
Yeah. Luckily it was a strong wheel, and apart from the QR it was fine.
When I used to do motorbike enduros I borrowed a bike as mine had been nicked just before a big event. I thought I would give it a bit of a service so changed the fork oil but misread the units of oil required so used 10x too much oil. Result was riding a two day event with completely rigid forks.I was too dumb to realise immediately what had gone wrong so didn't even let some out after day1!
Recently went on a cycle touring trip around Brittany on an old bike I had to make some hasty repairs on whilst my son was in nursery.
New BB in and cranks back on I happily rode off the ferry and put into the French sunshine where the crank pulled away from the chain ring and was left dangling from my cleats... Hadn't tightened up the crank or put the bung in.
Road bike related there was some fun 2 weeks ago in Bristol. Bike taken apart to travel in the car, wheels out, seat post out of frame. Everything arrived in Bristol in the car from Ipswich.
Wheels back in frame and secured. Seatpost into the frame and tighten clamp, actually over-tighten clamp and break it. Lucky as seat tube is carbon fibre, unlucky as it's a special order Miche part and still waiting for delivery. Always take the torque wrench for 10Nm clamps don't rely on the multi-tool to restrict max torque.
2 days of sunny riding went to waste.
Full fork service proudly completed. Everything back together.
Job done.
Then noticed the two shiny spring rings from the dust seals sitting on the bench.
I did once put new pads in and missed the holes in the pads with the pin - hence they fell out on a ride.
11pm Sunday before bank holiday road trip, finished new bike build, freshly oiled chain before I decided that I did need to take a few links out of chain, undid the quick link only for the chain to slip from my hand swinging down to the floor catapulting the quick link off into the garage....couldn’t find it anywhere missed BH on new bike! Did find the 1/2 quick link a year later when we were moving house inside a folded camping chair!!
In my teenage BMX years I got angry when I couldnt undo the rear wheel to fix a puncture as the axle nuts had slightly seized, chucked the bike and punctured the front wheel too...
My biggest mistake was putting the forefinger of my right hand near the front brake caliper disc and slicing it down to the bone just below the nail bed ..lots of blood and a rapid trip to the docs and onward to the hospital to stitch it back together again ..
I won't make that mistake again 😁
I stuck my foot in my spokes while riding along last night. Trying to dislodge a bush caught in my cassette and rear mech. Made a loud boingboignboignboing noise and I yelped a bit.
Only a tiny buckle in the nice strong Mavic Allroad, luckily. But what a div.
(there was a long version of this but the lovely forum logged me out after I typed it)
I thought of this thread last night when I was removing some cranks, and was reminded of the time I ruined a perfectly good crankset by pulling the threads out with the crank extractor... I'd taken the dust cap out, but forgotten to undo the crank bolt.
Removed the outer bolt from Hope cranks but forgot to remove the inner bolt (the one that spreads the splines out to lock the crank in place). Then proceeded to remove the crank arm by putting massive force onto the bearing preload nut. This did slowly pull the crank off but I kept running out of thread and having to wedge bits of steel plate in the gap to keep it going. After about 30 minutes of swearing, smashed knuckles and cursing the name Hope the crank eventually came off...at which point I immediately realised my mistake. Incredibly the cranks are undamaged apart from a lot of paint removal from the preload ring where the tool kept slipping. More incredibly it was me that fitted the cranks. What a dumbass.
ndthornton
Removed the outer bolt from Hope cranks but forgot to remove the inner bolt (the one that spreads the splines out to lock the crank in place). Then proceeded to remove the crank arm by putting massive force onto the bearing preload nut. This did slowly pull the crank off but I kept running out of thread and having to wedge bits of steel plate in the gap to keep it going. After about 30 minutes of swearing, smashed knuckles and cursing the name Hope the crank eventually came off…at which point I immediately realised my mistake. Incredibly the cranks are undamaged apart from a lot of paint removal from the preload ring where the tool kept slipping. More incredibly it was me that fitted the cranks. What a dumbass.
I'm impressed and amazed that you managed to do that, and that the preload ring and your frame survived.
Not really bad ones but multiple times set up tyres tubeless to find them in the wrong direction. And pretty much every time I remove pedals I take the skin off my knuckles.
I did once shoot an airspring onto the shed roof without noticing and couldn't understand the lack of internal parts when reassembling.
First time I ever did a lower service on forks. Thought I better do things right so got a torque wrench. Torque wrench didn't work and I sheared the bottom off the damper.
I’m impressed and amazed that you managed to do that, and that the preload ring and your frame survived.
Me too - a testament to Hope build quality I suppose
This one's easy for me, and a very recent example: I bled two pairs of Hope Tech 3 V4 brakes. Was chuffed to bits that I managed to do it, got them running perfectly... for about a day. Then they seized up. Googled the problem... how was I supposed to know not to use mineral oil which makes the seals swell?!
One of those perfect examples of "it's obvious once you know".
Hope rescued me. They serviced each of the 4 brakes at a cost of £55 per brake, so that's a £220 mistake!!
Rushing pedal removal and forgetting to:
1) Wear a long sleeve top and gloves
2) Put the chain into the big ring, leaving all the teeth exposed.
Now I've got a bit of nerve damage on the side of my wrist, a bunch of scar tissue underneath and what looks like a shark-bite scar.
Today's one.
Dug my old hardtail that I'd been using to ride to work on for a while out of the back of the garage to press into service on my turbo trainer.
Its got 10 speed Shimano on it so its not ancient but its not been given a lot of love either.
Rides fine on the turbo, gear index nicely, except the smallest two sprockets are a bit rough.
Hmm... I look in my assorted drivechain boxes
I'll change the cassette... Nope runs shitty in four of the sprockets now.
I'll try another wheel.. The wifes bike is also 10 speed so an easy swap... Nope still runs shit.
I'm kind of at a loss now
Could it be the derailleur? Maybe the jockey wheels are worn... Swapped the derailleur, spent a few minutes moving the limit screws, got it indexing nicely again, quite pleased by how faff free sorting out the shifting was.
STILL RUNS SHIT!!!
So what else have I not changed.
The chain.
OF COURSE IT WAS THE ****IN CHAIN!
Lesson learned. I'm actually quite good at swapping parts. I'm just really bad at figuring out what is wrong in the first place.
Not left a wheel in the car park but have left a Garmin in the middle of a car space in Afan.
Realised 20 minutes later after returning to our campsite, got a lift back to the car park expecting it to be gone but yep it was still there also with people still milling around too.
Lucky really.
TTOTD is a really useful under-documented feature of most modern Garmins:
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/08/display-number-garmin.html
(tl;dr: edit "startup.txt" in your /Garmin folder to include your contact details and it will display them every time the thing is turned on. No, it won't stop a tea-leaf, but if you've been a muppet and just left it behind, it may well just get it back to you again...)
Also (and this is much lower tech), find the lanyard in the box that noone uses, fit it to the device and make a point of *always* looping it round your handlebar before locking it to the mount. It makes it almost impossible to accidentally knock it off and lose it. And, for a last tip, print a few sticky labels with your contact details, and stick 'em to the back of the device underneath the silicon case.
(Spot the rider who nearly lost a brand new Edge 1000 in the woods once!)
I took my old rear mech off one night. Removed the old fancy breakaway bolt I had in in too, what a pain that was. Swapped it onto my shiney new mech, another pain then fitted it with new cables, got the indexing absolutely nailed on, then realised I had the actual new mech sitting beside me untouched...
I am very proficient at shortening cable outers with the inner still in place, lost count of the times I have done this
done the hodgynd finger in the rotor trick
built up di2 adventure beastie.stick it on a turbo, pedal awsy, no shifting.
check the junction box - no lights. checked all the connections are good. pull
the seatpost out to check the batt.... hang on, isn't that the battery over there
on the table ..... d'oh .... put the bike back together again 🙂
Spent several hours over a weekend trying to sort out the grinding sound from the BB on my singlespeed when I was hammering up the climbs.
Couldn’t sort it.
Rode with my mate who said it did t sound like the BB.
He loosened the rear QR, tightened it again and the noise was gone as my mighty powers (!) no longer caused the rear disc to bind slightly.
I am no longer allowed to fit pedals, have ruined 2 cranks.
Also not maintenance per say, i managed to touch my bare leg against my brake disc following a long hard descent. It branded the shape into my leg, just before a beach holiday. It proper hurt and the mark was there for weeks.
I did once shoot an airspring onto the shed roof without noticing and couldn’t understand the lack of internal parts when reassembling
Don't sell yourself short, that is a cracker.
My worst offence was riding the whole W2 loop at Afan cursing my bike for steering oddly.
Later found the lower headset bearing on garage floor, where it had fallen out while in workstand.
I'm slightly more competent now, honest.