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Mine;
At the age of about 15 having grown out of my bike I decided to see if my dads would fit. I decided it would but didn't like his saddle and wanted to transfer the one from my bike.
I didn't realise/think that the saddles might be swappable between seatposts so decided to fit my seatpost to his frame.
So I spent a happy afternoon bashing the top of my seatpost with a 2lb hammer in an effort to make it fit into the 'slightly too small' seat tube on my Dads bike.
Eventually the frame split down from the seatclamp slot.
Being a coward I shoved it to the back of the shed and didn't say a word. It was about 2 years later I was presented with the results and asked to explain.
More recently I managed to refit the lowers the wrong way round when servicing my forks although that was relatively easily resolved.
mmmm, my worst has to be when I was about 10, my dad asked me to measure the flex on a storage heater and cut it down to length so he could then re attach the plug,,, somehow I thought it best to plug it in before I cut it.. 😯
In my old job as an ATM security engineer I was training 10 staff with a live atm on how not to activate the ink sytems when working on a machine.
I forgot to diconnect the firing mechanisms............ thus destroying £250,000 cash infront of the customer ;-0
FAIL
In early 2004 I needed a new CSU for my fox forxs due to worn stanchions. In my eagerness to fit them and get riding (had a big ride the following morning)I use the old set to mark the correct height steerer and proceeded to cut.
It was only after that I realised I had made the cut on another incidental mark on the steerer and it was about 2 inches too short.
120 quid down the toilet in the time it takes to wield a hacksaw.
😳
stipping BB threads by brute force, and also the sump plug on my RD350YPVS 😯
i own a torque wrench now
Fitting a new shower to the mains, assumed the 2 stopcocks in the bathroom would isolate it just cracked the nut a touch to be careful, never found the nut, spent ages while trying to divert water into the bath trying to figure out where the stopcock was!
Turns out the plumbing was bodged so that any stopcock was fitted after the shower so I had to get a neighbour to turn it off outside at the mains!
So the bikes upright and i'm cutting round the old non-locking style grips with a stanley knife. Get about 80% of the way around and the blade flys through the last part of the grip. It's at this point i realised that i'm cutting up, towards myself with quite lot of pressure, Stopped about an inch from my own neck!
Had to go and have a quiet cup of tea and a fresh change of pants after that. Used lock-ons ever since!
More recently I managed to refit the lowers the wrong way round when servicing my forks although that was relatively easily resolved
+1, How easy it to that?!
went to unscrew the immersion heater plug off my old water cylinder only to find it seixed. leaned into it and basically tore the whole section out of the top of the tank.
bum.
Overtightening the shock eyelet bolt on my old 2004 FSR and sheared off the thread - replacemnt rocker from BETD £100 - oops 😳
The glue didn't set properly once on a puncture patch....does that count?
The glue didn't set properly once on a puncture patch....does that count?
Is that becuase you don't do any maintenance 😉
first couple of times I tried to bleed brakes were messy
not a mechanical fail as such, but having proudly changed cog and retensioned the EBB on my Tinbred, I briefly span the cranks while prodding the chain to see if it would derail under sideways load, and found suddenly and rapidly that there certainly wasn't enough slack to fit my finger inbetween the chainring and chain.
I did find that a new On-One ss chainring's teeth are sharp enough to go through a nail though.
1.5 years without a punture went for a ride last sunday front was flat withing 5 mins of leaving hut opened tyre to see a presta valve cap rolling around in the tyre been in there with same tube still have no idea how it got in there tho lol
on my bike-open both ends of the brakes and basically topping up the floor for fourty minutes.
Generally - Unscrewing my plumbing much further down through the lateral torque of trying to unscrew a tap to change a washer, result being my dog dancing about in the kitchen under the ensuing indoor rain coming through the lights.
Recently stabbed myself in the chest with a Stanley knife while trimming the sole of my new MP66s to fit the cleats.
Recently stabbed myself in the chest with a Stanley knife while trimming the sole of my new MP66s to fit the cleats.
LOL
Near avoidance - routing out a bass guitar body to fit new electrics, was only when I finished I noticed how close the strings from my hoodie were to the bit rotating at a million RPM.
If it had caught I have no doubt it would have guided the router straight into my adam's apple.
Ha ha - just narrowly avoided another.
Fitting a new external BB this evening gave me a great chance to try out my new torque wrench. Dialled up to 50nm, my eyes are bulging as I try to torque it up sufficiently to get the wrench to click.
OK, I think, I'll do the other and see what that's like. 'Sensibly tight' by old standards and 'clack' there it is!
How odd, I think.
One quick RTFM later and I find that the wrench only works on a normal thread. The reverse thread of my drive side still has to be guessed.
Anyone got any spare 2.5mm spacers? I was so tight on the drive side the cup was still going in and stretching the spacers aside as it went.
oops!
I fitted a brand new set of square taper deore cranks on my work bike. Whilst tightening said crank arms the doorbell rang and off I trotted to answer it. On its maiden voyage I discovered that the none drive side crank bolt was not tightened and stripped the inside of the arm out.
Stunning. Never even got off the front garden. The arm was ****ed.
Recently stabbed myself in the chest with a Stanley knife while trimming the sole of my new MP66s to fit the cleats.
Ah, it's not just me then. I tore a chunk of fingernail off with a screwdriver doing just this the other day. Then snapped a Stanley knife blade in two and the broken bit catapulted wildly through the air inches from my eyes. It's seemingly an enterprise fraught with risk and potential haemorrhage.
Back when I rode BMX, I was trying to remove my Profile cranks to put them on a new frame. The crank puller I had was more confusing than calculus, and after I finally figured it out, I neglected to tighten the tool into the arm. Needless to say I didn't learn my lesson after stripping the threads on one arm, so I stripped 'em on the other too. Took me an hour to cut through the toughened spindle with a grinder (after trying everything I could think of without destroying them).
More recently I tried to fix my mum's cheapo pressure washer (she was prepared to bin it, but I figured I'd give it a go). Trust me, getting two pints of water pump oil out of wooden garden furniture and brick patios is difficult.
you're not a real bicycle mechanic until you've sawn a steerer too short.
Made my front brake hose too short DOH!!
Also had a crank puller malfunction many years ago as an eager 16 year old 'expert mechanic'(or so I thought on my first Muddy Fox, the lmtd edition red one).
Screwed the puller in nice & tight, then spent 20 minutes with my wimpy muscles swinging on the spanner, achieving nothing but starting to strip the extractor thread.
Utters some mid-pubescant profanity, unscrews puller, finds 14mm crank bolt still in place.
Mmmmmmmmm, that'll be the problem then..........
Quite minor other than the timing, my back wheel dropped out halfway round McMoab last weekend. Luckily it did it on a nice easy bit and didn't just fire me off a precipice 
I got most of my spannering disasters out of my system on my first motorbike, almost wrote it off with an 8mm spanner once.
i broke a spanner the other day trying to get my pedals off, then turned the new spanner the [u]correct[/u] way
Refitted a cam belt one notch out. Whirr- clunk. Top end rebuild- bugger.
Enrolled in college in an effort to get my youthful life back on track (aged 20). Borrowed my Dad's cheapo commuter bike, and in an effort to appeal to the kool kidz I stuck a set of BMX handlebars on it.
Second day, home time, and I forged a path between the many studes onto the main road between two parked cars. Saw a car coming and hit the brakes - BMX handlebars swung forwards / downwards at high velocity, coming to rest on the front wheel, but not hard enough to stop the bike which continued onto the main road.
No choice but to deliberately fall over onto my side (harder than you'd think)... Came to rest with my head inches from the passing car - everyone laughing - never went back to college...
Back when I was 16 I was cleaning the chain on my 50cc Suzuki by leaving the engine idling in first whilst the bike was on its stand. I held a rag to the slowly moving chain and then screamed very loudly as it snagged and dragged my index finger round the rear sprocket. To this day the last 1/8th of an inch is solid scar tissue.
I was levelling my living room floor joists last year. I went to put in a 120mm screw diagonally through the joist into the plate. Impact driver slipped out of screw head and landed plumb onto my thumb nail (where I was holding the screw). I didn't quite release the trigger in time, and therefore impact drove (is that the correct term?) a #2 posidrive bit into my thumb nail. ouch.
that was may last year. got about 3mm of black stilll to grow out from my thumb nail!
Never done the steerer tube too short thing, but close to it.
Stripped, cleaned, reassembled and fitted to bike a chainset that then failed to work; took a few moments to note that I'd reassembled it granny/outer/middle... that folly was beer assisted.
Had to send an RP23 (same bike, actually) back to Mojo with a begging letter after I'd wondered what the grub screw with the white ball jammed into the hex socket was; it certainly released something once I'd prised the ball out and vented it. Bike didn't ride too well next day.
Just spat out some tea reading user-removed's epic!
Stripped the crank extract threads out of the LH crank on a bike a few years ago, so ended up using a fork type ball joint splitter & a lump hammer every time i needed to get the crank off (which i probably did about 5 times without a problem).
Fitted my boxfresh elixirs to my bike, bought a bleed kit to cut down the lines a bit. All going fine until the piston spacer dropped out without my knowledge. Pumped lever as per instruction and fired pistons across the garage and brake fluid pissed everywhere!
My worst fail was removing the gearbox from a car. I didn't fully appreciate how heavy it was and how hard it is to support it's weight by hand while lying under a car. As I removed the last mounting bolt the full weight lammed down on my hand and I was trapped there shouting for help as I couldn't move it off my hand...
Cut the steerer too short on my 2009 revs. I had measured at least 4 times. 😯
Luckily there was just enough that a lower stack headset and stem did the trick. 2mm of spacers too!
Extra low front end compensated for with unfashionable risers.
Now I feel good about being a moron. 😀you're not a real bicycle mechanic until you've sawn a steerer too short.
There is not enough space on the internet for my list of 'events' so one from my Dad.
Using a scalpel to cut some paper while having the telephone propped between his ear and shoulder. Phone slips so he goes to grab it stabbing the scapel straight into his arm severing an artery and squirting blood across the office and several colleagues.
lol @ solamanda, just spat my porridge over the monitor!
Removing raw plugs from a wall, the obvious tool of choice was a screw driver. Two mins into the job and I had a screw driver stuck in my face. Straight through the side of my nose and imbeded in about an inch. I was a little concerned with the situation, my wife was busy laughing and reminding me NOT to get blood on the carpet.
I get a man in these days for such taxing jobs
Years ago I was cutting the gaiter off a moped fork with a Stanley knife, I cut down and went straight across the palm of my hand that was holding the fork leg.
At this point my mate brought me a cup of tea, I put my hand out to get it, and then I saw the 5" cut...
Wasn't deep, but I jumped more when the nurse 'splashed' it with stuff.
Other than that, destroying the rear caliper on a Peugeot as I didn't realise that the pistons rotated in/out - consequently I was just trying to 'push' them back in.
i tried to fix what i thought was the cheaper rate electricity switch unit but was fired across the room into the wall and knocked out. Turns out when electric company came out it was where the mains came in the house and was huge voltage and i blew the local substation too 🙂
Bike wise i wanted a new rim on my ss wheel so thought id help the shop out by cutting the spokes. Turns out i couldnt get the spoke bits out as the freewheel was still on 🙂 and i couldnt get it off with no wheel to hold on to . It took a big vice and lots of damage to the hub to get the cog off 🙁 needed a new cog too and took ages longer . Bugger
Did the same firestarter while still in my pre-pubescant 'expert mechanic' stage. Took hub to shop with freewheel still on and hedgehog-like spikes all round from chopped spokes.
Oh well, its how we learn I suppose.....
Not bike related:
I worked a summer in a small machine shop, often left alone. One simple job was using a big ancient lathe to cut-to-length and shape some bar. While using the chuck key to secure the bar, I managed to brush the power knob, engaging the lathe.
In a fraction of a second, the key was under the chuck, sheared off on the bed and flying through the air at warp speed. By good fortune, my hand was palm-down so I let go, otherwise I would have lost it. And the flying chuck key could have impaled me too!
LMAO at Mantastic's wife. Very supportive 🙂
Managed to put some brake pads in the wrong way round on the car once. Metal to metal contact not best way of a stopping car! ****ing eejit!
Didn't get quite enough spacer height above the stem so that the top cap was just resting on the top of the steerer. Spent a year with the headset going ker-clunk horribly on every bump and me thinking "I must sort that out one day". When I finally did and worked out why the hedset had never tightened up, the headset bearings were so full of s**t they were finished.
I won't say how recently that was.....!
rebuilt a suzuki x7 (250cc 2 stroke motorcycle) couldnt get it to start on the kick start.No bother I thought will just bump it down the hill.Severall sweaty pushes up and swearing downs I give it one last go, helmet gloves long since dicarded in a sweaty pool.Push to the top of a really big hill.Here I go youth and determination grrr face engaged run,run,run,jump side saddle bump style as I wasnt really expecting it too fire..... oh but it does and at full throttle .With a mixture of fear suprise and the heroic belief that the bike must survive I stupidly hung on to the bars the bike draging me along it on the back wheel me useing my knees to steer the bike before finnaly it gets away from me crashes into a car and totaling itself and badly bruising a neighbours car .Bad day bloody knees, broken bike and the neighbour shouting at me. turns out on rebuilding it I dislodged the throttle cable leaving the carbs wide open
I've had way too many...
After fitting a ghetto tubeless setup to my brand new bike I was trimming down the excess inner tube with a sturdy Stanley knife that was a tad blunt.
*Pop*
*Fssssssssssshhhhhhhh*
The end result was one brand new Kenda Nevegal sporting a 1.5" slash in the sidewall.
Buzzlightyear - an apprentice at RR had a lathe disaster of impressive proportions.
A big Colchester lathe, they had a length of bar stock through the chuck and about 6ft sticking out the back, but foolishly no steady to support it.
Busy turning and the 6ft length starts to run a bit eccentric, then bends a bit, then bends 90degrees, still spinning at 600rpm. It repeatedly smacks into the floor, rips the lathe off the floor and starts bouncing the whole machine around the workshop.
Apprenticeship fail!
sam_underhill - Memberthat was may last year. got about 3mm of black stilll to grow out from my thumb nail!
The more you cut it, the quicker it grows... 😆
In an effort to not scratch my forks when trying to remove a zip-tie from the brake cable routing jobby, so intent was I to not damage the fork, that I decided the knife angle directly in to my thumb was better than towards the fork. Needless to say, I regretted the knife in to thumb nail job, when it prevented my applying any pressure with that thumb later on in the bike build.
5 months later the saw I was using to cut a bit of rail for some fencing jumped out from the cut and into my other thumb, sawing from the tip of the nail right down and out of the base. Fortunatley the angle meant I didn't cut much flesh, but with constant trimming I managed to grow out the damage before a family wedding, so an entirely new nail in under 3 months compared to the knife cut that took some 8 months!
Back to bikes and as a boy I had no idea how to get the forks sperated from my first Raleigh. An hour after I began, having removed the quill stem, got no less then 3 of my dad's favoured flat-heads wedged around the fork and then attempting to use a hammer to create play and vibration enough to work the screwdrivers out. Multiple dents in the top and downtube later (it was already due for scrap, I was just trying to gain an understanding) and I gave up. My dad was neither capable of understanding my idiocy or impressed when he went to take it out of the garage to get rid of it.
Plenty more attempts from my youth I'm sure.
Surely everyone's taken their bike out the the back of the car, put both wheels in then ridden off without connecting the V-brakes back up?
Once tried to remove the bb cup from a set of DMR chieftain cranks and kept turning it the wrong way. As I was thinking "this is really siezed" it sheared off leaving half bb cup still in the frame. Took three hours in the uni workshop with a hammer and piece of steel to uncrews it by pushing it round the thread.
tron - MemberSurely everyone's taken their bike out the the back of the car, put both wheels in then ridden off without connecting the V-brakes back up?
I have, parked at the visitor centre at the top of Sutton Bank 6 or 7 years ago, discovered when trying to slow [s]a bit[/s] a lot for the first hairpin that I had no front brakes, cue swift left turn into the woods, luckily the gate was open or it could have been very messy 😯
about 10 years ago i was moving house, it was a sunny day, so i emptied the house onto the rear patio, tv, high end hifi everything sitting on the patio in the sunshine.
I moved the washing machine and noticed that the cold tap was jammed open.
So instead of sorting it out, i decided to turn off the water at the mains then fit one end of the washing machine hose to the cold, the other end to the hot (in one loop)...... ands turn the water back on.
all was well for 30 minutes, then i began to hear what sounded like someone using a hose in my back garden, near the expensively loaded patio....
the cold water had travelled up the hot pipe at force, into my roofspace, filled up the water heater/holder thingy, and then it had started flowing out the over-flow pipe....... which was 10 foot above my patio.
genius insurance claim form that one.
Serviced my Bomber Z1s and forgot to put the top out springs back in. I did gain an extra 20mm of travel but the clunk was really offputting.
GlenH's wife was faffing getting ready for a ride at Coed-y-Brenin so I "helped" by putting the wheels on her bike. It wasn't untill she crashed and landed on her head that rear wheel fell off because I hadn't done it up tight enough.
Bicycle - not a lot but a few motorcycles ones - my favourite was changing the oil in a set of forks - I put the new oil in without taking the old out - the bike was ridden for months with 2mm of fork travel. I couldn't figure out why.
I also did a cylinder head stud up nice and tight until it sheared. - I learnt from that one.
Edit - remembered a bicycle one - drilling out a rivet in a mudguard - straight thru the mudguard straight into my hand which was supporting the guard. Drill bit stuck in my hand - I had to blip the drill in reverse to get it off.
a friend had recently got a new Honda Fireblade. he was outside cleaning and admiring it one afternoon. he'd clean the front brake disc and caliper. for some idiotic reason he put his finger into the disc and turned the wheel . the force of the wheel turning was greater than his finger could cope with when it made contact with the calpier.
my bike related.....
building the front wheel on a jig at the LBS. one of the nipples rounded off meaning i'd have to cut the spoke in order to replace the nipple. i cut the spoke and the nipple/spoke came flying out of the rim and hit me square between the eyes.
note to self.... spokes under tension can be dangerous when cut if no rim tape is in place.