[Closed] Your worst mechanicals

Losing front brake descending hardKnott was fun.

Having a pedal separate from its axle was interesting.

Snapping saddle rails in a race was fun, finished with saddle in my back pocket and sore legs.

Pre mobile phone, tacoing a wheel in lower goyt valley. Walked all the way to the cat & fiddle dragging the bike, hoping to phone from there to ask my mum to collect me.
Bastards wouldn't let me use the phone! Had to walk down to Macc forest for next phone iirc. Got home very late that day

singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/your-worst-mechanicals/#post-11248980

 

Had to ride home in shame once when I discovered my tyre logo was not correctly aligned with the valve stem.

First generation eggbeater pedal coming away from axle, had to one legged pedal for a few miles.

Freehubs failing so wouldn't engage, had to push and scoot my way home.

More punctures than I had patches resulting in the walk of shame

Do people type Shirley, instead of surely intentionally? Like because of Airplane? I see it a lot on here and I just don’t know...

My contribution... snapped frame resulting in having to ride a hard tail with dirt jump forks instead of nice full sus bike for the entire season in the Alps. Hands have never recovered.

Not me but saw a guy on a Sam Pilgrim video yesterday who managed to snap a front maxle which sent him over the bars, it was kinda weird of the dude to be standing there in the middle of Colchester with a wheel under his arm with a big cut with blood down his arm taking a selfie with him..

I once slashed a tyre at the halfway point of a long ride. Disastrously I'd gone for a minimalist weight weenie XC approach only packing 2 CO2, a tyre lever and a tube. No one to call, no train going the right way, bus wouldn't take bikes. I worked out the 19 miles home was just about walkable but quickly gave up on that idea. Decided to eat the cost of a tyre and hope the rim was okay riding back flat. That was the last time I took CO2 rather than a pump...

I parked a spare bike at work for several years, a bit exposed to the weather. Every rubber and plastic component was shagged. Replaced tyres, grips, and saddle and took it for a ride up the hill behind work. Brakes were both dragging and leaking fluid, the Gravity Dropper actuation mechanism unbonded from the post, then the rear shock blew and squirted oil everywhere. Replaced the shock, had the forks serviced, stripped and serviced the brakes, and swapped out the seatpost, then on the next ride, the replacement Gravity Dropper snapped. Eventually got it running, but would have been cheaper to have just bought a new frame.

Years ago, on a looooong 'cross ride miles from civilisation, my front-tyre bead snapped on a field-edge bridleway. Found some discarded baler twine in a hedge, lashed the tyre onto the rim and then put just the right amount of air in. Disconnected front canti brake for clearance and rode the 25 miles home.

Poss my finest in-the-field bodge.

^ That's a brilliant get home bodge. Must have been quite a feeling to make it home under your own steam from that.

Worst were years ago on an old Shogun mountain bike. Wore the rim through, split and BANG. Same bike, crank snapped going uphill. That was sore.

My front (mechanical disc) brake detached itself near the start of Ten under the Ben one year. I have extremely limited mechanical knowledge and ability (awaits stoning) - so I tied the brake hose in a knot and finished the lap - brake bumping off the wheel, heart in mouth.

I’ve had that eggbeater one-legged comedy pedaling problem too - shoe attached to pedal, pedal constantly slipping off axle - not much fun on the technical descents.

Fitting a new rear tyre with a tube instead of tubeless because I'd ran out of Stans .

Went for a local ride in the middle of winter / blasting it down with snow and about 6 miles from the house I get a huge gorse thorn puncture which flattens the tyre.

I take the tube out and fit my spare, pump up with CO2 and ride for about 1 minute and the tyre's flat again.

I stop, check the replacement tube and see that there's a second puncture where a second gorse thorn as gone through. This time I thoroughly check the tyre and find 3 more thorns / inner tube puncture holes. Fortunately I have some of those Park super patches in my bag but because its leathering down with snow and everything is wet, they wont stick to the tube.

The 6 mile walk home in the cold wasn't fun.

On a tour from Edinburgh to Cork I wore through my rear rim.

This was 1/2 days ride outside Belfast fully loaded with touring stuff- tent and all the crap.

I asked some builders if there was any bike shops about- they had no idea.

I was just sat looking at the bust rim when someone went past on a very fancy road bike. I flagged him down and asked about shops. He went home, came back with his car and drove me to the second nearest shop who said they could do a wheel swap for me then.

From an absolute disaster to a great experience in how generous people can be with their time: )

Thanks northern Irish roady Bloke (whistler name I have shamefully forgotten) . You have inspired me to take the time to fix anybody bike if I pass them and they are in a pickle : )

My best helping others bodge is dismantling my mudguard to provide a bolt for someone’s on one ti dropout so they could get back to their car

Did this in Oz about 30 miles from home in the bush while trying to climb a really steep hill on my singlespeed.

Took the pedals off, lowered the saddle and thus converting the bike into a velocipede. What I recall is not the effort, but the chafe. A hot humid day, it was horrendous...

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My headset came loose once.

Once snapped a chain at an extremely inopportune moment... I was really putting the power down to catch up with some mates going downhill. hit the family jewels enough to make them blue and sore for weeks, and cracked a rib at the same time.

Could not walk, talk, or breathe for weeks.

So much pain beacuse of a stupid chain.

Usually anything ride ending is the result of something failing multiple times until spares run out. Can't recall having any spontaneous mechanical that have resulted in a long walk, it's always the 5+ puncture days.

My front brake died yesterday, that was pretty scary! Not a bit of a fade, or an inconsistent bite point, or the pads a bit worn. Just cruising down a bridleway at a brisk pace, and met some walkers coming the other way and................NOTHING!

Thankfully I'd just upgraded them so the rear had plenty of bite so just threw my weight back and hoped!

Never really had a bad mechanical, broke mech hanger on my soul riding a wee trail near torridon yh the night before doing the big loop, resulting in a bodge that meant I had 3 gears for the next days ride.

Chain "explosion" on the Wazoo while putting out some random figure north of 400W up the local wall in Midanbury (Dell Rd), that hits ~22%. Fortunately it's only ~1 mile from home, so I walked on the flat and uphill and freewheeled on the downhill.

Ooft! Slack!

Starting out on the Fredalike (ripped off Fred Whitton GPX), I'd boxed clever and gone superlight. I'd bought a Recon 11-32 160g cassette and a pair of Mavic R-SYS sub 1300g wheels. I was indeed 'it'...

The first significant climb was Honister; bits of 20%. Ha ha suckers, see my 34 front/32 rear easy peasy gear... The bottom (biggest) 2 sprockets on Recon's are aluminium which promptly sheared off. Bolleux! Ok, limit screw adjusted and I'm now 10 miles into a 100 miler plus and riding an 11-28 9 speed with the broken bit zip tied to the spokes.

The descent off Honister is quite steep to start. Time to break in my lovely new R-SYS jobbies with EXALITH rims which apparently can withstand nuclear explosions. Errrm, no.

Clearly they hadn't been destressed properly as on first heat cycle, one of the few spokes in the front wheel 'popped' fully into place, detensioned the wheel which then went out of true by at least 25mm.... Bolleux again.

I had to get a bit medieval to straighten the wheel a bit to clear the fork and undo the front caliper to stop it rubbing the rim. Ever tried 25% descents on just a back brake? Don't.

Fast forward to Whinlatter where there's a bike repair/hire shop. They had the special Mavic specific nipple driver and got the wheel within ~5mm lateral.

We limped round the rest, wounded but unbowed in a little bit over 7hrs total. Character building...

Self inflicted due to world class muppetry. I lost my front wheel on my first trip to Bike Park Wales on my old hard tail. Distracted due to excitement and nerves, I didn't properly tighten the QR skewer after getting the bike out of the car. It lasted about a third of the way down the first run (Sixtapod) till I went over a small drop at speed. I was on the ground bleeding and seeing stars before I had an inkling anything was wrong. It could have been far, far worse! A few scuffs, bruises, broken spokes and a bent rotor. Some lads stopped to help and with a pair of pliers we straightened my disk enough to to refit the wheel and coast to the bottom. The on site bike shop fixed my wheel and I had a further trouble free 8 runs. I still flush with embarrassment thinking of how it happened and am properly paranoid about checking wheel security!

Snapped crank arm resulting in banana shaped toptube when bike flew into a tree and a cracked radius bone at the elbow, plus a big scab I couldn't stop picking at for weeks.
Little disappointed nobody's said, and don't call me shirley.

Started out from Hope to do an Edale/Jacob's loop. Got on the power to climb out of Roych Clough and my freewheel exploded... Cue a lot of pushing, pumping, scooting and coasting to get round to Edale where I waited while a riding mate pedalled back to Hope to get the van.

This is my most recent. Still can't work out how I managed to hamfist it to this extent, given I'd actually torqued up the bolts correctly about two weeks prior. My guess is that the combination of this particular chainring and crank needed slightly longer bolts.

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50008427122_ac7e94947a_c.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50008427122_ac7e94947a_c.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2jc5g7J ]IMG_20200508_100931_resized_20200509_090234213[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/76951366@N02/ ]hutchinson2017[/url], on Flickr

Snapped a fork steerer on a crosser just where it enters the head tube. A couple of minutes before I'd been doing about 30mph on a gravel road but I'd slowed down and just did a sort of gentle forward roll onto some grass at the side. Lucky.

While my overall list of mechanicals would be too long to mention here, I hold these two dearly:

- chain explosions on my old singlespeed days. Always happened at peak torque, always resulted in jewels hitting top tube, or worse, the stem.

- rear wheel explosions lately over my #endurobro career. No matter if it's something minor (flattened rim) or major (imploded wheel) the results are always dramatic. My worst one was last year on a steep rough chute that you do at speed almost like a head first drop. Rear wheel hits one of the rocks harder than anticipated mid chute and promptly detonates with a bang, full landmine style. Detonation sends me head first over the last 1,5m of the chute, then the 16kg AM9 hits me on the back of the head. Friends ask me if I'm ok and if help was needed, I didn't want to be the buzz killer and "yeah yeah, I'm fine, carry on I'll meet you in at the shuttle van". Had to walk down 80% of a EWS Stage track with the bike over me shoulder as the remainings of the wheel were stuck in the seatstays

About 20 years ago I flicked up a piece of wire from an old mesh fence with my front wheel. It got snagged by my big ring with sufficient force shatter it. The bike stopped dead from speed in the distance from the outer radius of the big ring to the outer radius of the middle ring. Approximately 12mm.

I travelled for some considerable distance further and made a right old mess of myself.

I’ve still got the shattered ring fastened to the inside of my shed door.

Sheared a pedal off the spindle and rear hub completely seized were two unfixable ones. The hub would have been v bad somewhere wild as you can't wheel the bike, need to carry or drag it, but it was only a mile or so walk to get picked up.

Best trail repair I ever saw was when I tacoed a front wheel on a very innocuous crash, mustn't have been built very well. It was in a sort of grassroots, turn up and race thing I did when I worked in the US and was just starting with mountainbiking. Was staring at the wheel in despair when another racer stopped, took it off my bike, and slammed it against a slope on the ground. Straightened it out perfectly - Said that will get you home and rode off!

It was a lefty wheel so IDK if the unusual dishing helped or what but it did the trick.

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007695558_abc0d6d381_k.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007695558_abc0d6d381_k.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2jc1vDy ]fork[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/55682113@N08/ ]happycrenker[/url], on Flickr

Biking holiday in Liguria, stick in rear wheel, derailleur into rear wheel, derailleur bent, 8 sapim spokes snapped and carbon drop out wrecked.

Was on a hire bike for the rest of the week.

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/5573/14241982339_4fd425e878_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/5573/14241982339_4fd425e878_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/nGvTaD ]Broken dropout on Scott Spark RC[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

Replaced back end once we got back....

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/3860/14242041900_04ca20dcb6_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/3860/14242041900_04ca20dcb6_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/nGwbSy ]New Chainstays for Scott Spark RC[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

Early fixed gear conversion on a gaspipe frame, the DT popped out of the BB shell as I was riding along. Didn't crash, just felt the frame go incredibly mushy. Luckily I was close to home and walked it.

MTB along the SDW, my freehub decided to seize. Had to ride the 20 miles home on a variable gear fixed wheel - fine for up the hills but you spin out pretty quickly on 30/11 so had to ride the brakes down most of them.

Probably my most memorable is punching a hole through my fork lower, halfway through a 50km race.
Finished the race DFL.
Luckily this was the late 90's & an SL Judy, so I could just buy one new leg.

Those broken fork steerers are a problem I thought we'd left behind in the 1960s.

Obviously we need to start stuffing a bit of ash broom handle up the bottom of the steerer like we did in the old days with lightweight bikes.

Doesn't stop it breaking, but the consequences are, shall we say, more graceful. 🙂

Those broken fork steerers are a problem I thought we’d left behind in the 1960s.

My photo above was an alloy steerer in a carbon fork. It suffered from appalling judder and I wondered if it was just a case of aluminium growing brittle under repeated flexing - can't remember all the technical terms for that!

Nowt worse than a snapped chain here.

Those broken fork steerers are a problem I thought we’d left behind in the 1960s

Mine was also a 1" steerer so basically 60s tech!

In the past month.
Freewheel failure requiring push/scoot/walk home - in the rain. Mrs. Slow did excellent service pushing me along until she have me a good hard push and wobbled off!!

Dropped chain whilst hopping up a kerb. Cue comedy dismount and hopping around on one leg attempting to avoid falling down a bank at the side. Strange buttock and leg pains for several days afterwards,

Losing front brake descending hardKnott was fun

I actually flinched as I read that. Terrifying.

Ooh I'd forgotten about when I snapped a frame in 2 JRA in the pentlands, called a pal for a lift home.

Also noticed a rim going at the braking surface while touring in France, luckily passed a town with a shop and rebuilt it that evening.

My headset came loose once.

I had the bearings in mine seize on me once, mid decent, I shit a brick.

Worse I think was a set of mid/late 2000s spec Avid Code brakes on my old DH bike, the lever sort of collapsed somehow inside the body meaning they jammed on, thankfully only, at a guess, 20% power or I would have been straight over the bars, they were massively powerful. Stupidly, I didn't junk them, I got down to the bottom of the run, sort of whacked the piston thing out and kept using them for a few months without a moments worry, these days I would binned them, but only after I destroyed the to ensure they were never found by some unsuspecting kid and used.

Oh, I forgot about the ratchet ring on my e-bike motor stripping the other week which meant having to walk / scoot the last couple of km to work a few weeks ago

Probably getting on for 20 years ago but my first suspension fork, an RST Gamma TL with a 1” threaded steerer, decided to relinquish its grip on said steerer as I hit a pothole at around 20mph. Still have the scars on my nose, which was used mainly as a brake.

More recently, road bike bars rotating downwards after a jolt at 40+ MPH. No damage and easily fixed, but I didn’t half shit myself...

Cross-threaded a pedal on a rental bike in Utah years ago. Gave way during a ride round Slickrock, had to coast/walk out. Poison Spider sorted me with a replacement crank for free though 👍🏻

Snapped a chainstay on a 95 Kona. Another walk home, wasn't far luckily.

Nothing recent though 🤞🏻

The worst one I’m admitting to was coming home, turning right at lights off a dual carriageway and the chain snapped, taking the front mech off with it.

Had to call International Rescue in the form of very pregnant and not very impressed wife.

Forgot to put the little locking pins on a set of monos. Entered one of the busiest junctions in Glasgow at the Kinning park entry to the motorway, at speed with no pads in the brakes. they'd fallen out at some point and I just didnt notice as i wasnt braking.

If anyone wants you know what the lever feel of that is its thunk, thunk, thunk.. The timing with the traffic was pure luck.

A few stick in my mind:

Wore through by rear rim and had a big loop of allow peel open in the hills above Aboyne. Tube burst but I put a replacement tube in with juuuust enough air to keep the rim off the ground and rolled slowly back down to the town, standing the whole way with my weight as far over the front wheel as I could get, and just the front brake.

Frozen freewheel on my Raleigh Maverick (oh yeah) on a ride with my Dad. Freewheeling both ways. We rigged a tow-rope and he pulled me, until I got so cold that I pulled him!

New wheels built with ultra light XC rims, on my second ride made a mess of a local descent, crashed into a tree and tacoed both.

Not destructive (fortunately I stopped pedaling before anything broke!) but descending some singletrack at Hamsterley on a nearly worn-out groupset and the chain got tangled between pedal strokes. Never seen anything quite like it and had to remove the wheel to untangle it all. Note the chain loop just by the lower jockey wheel, and the fact that the chain is almost horizontal coming off the chainrings:

Amazingly, after untangling it, everything started working again! That said, this was the last time this groupset had an outing before being replaced...

Probably last week. Somehow snapped the cage on my rear mech. The jockey wheels then jammed into the cassette. Still no idea how it happened. I tried to bodge my chain into a single speed but it never worked. I had to freewheel 10km home but managed a couple of PR's on some downs along the way.

Full on collision with back of the car. Was interesting trying to ride it 5 miles back home with front wheel polishing main triangle bottom tube to bare metal.

@teethgrinder just made me nervously looking at my Banshee...

Cheers!
I.

Snapped the bolts on my rear brake lever during a kinlochleven enduro, right as it came to the puckery-arse steep bit. I'd probably whacked it at some point but I just went "Right, I've left it as late as I can to start braking" and then it just fell off in my hand. Cue decent sized crash then limping down the rest of one of my favourite race stages with no back brake.

(obviously not the biggest in terms of cost or drama or whatever, but it was pretty impactful- way more than when I broke the frame in half and it just stopped)

Early 80s- The twang of a snapping front brake cable as I bombed down a hill towards a junction with Great Western Road in Glasgow in the rush hour

Mid 90s- Ignoring that annoying creak which turned out to be the prelude to seat post clamp failure, followed by riding ten miles home sitting on the back left corner of the saddle, and waddling for the next 3 days

3 weeks ago- Strange sensation from the driveside pedal which developed after a 60 kph descent and on investigation turned out to be a badly cracked crank

I went round a bus and straight into the back of a car parked in the bus lane. My Accu-Trax were fine, the downtube of my new Orange E2 less so. The replacement frame lasted less than a month (cracked at a weld). Didn't own an Alu frame for a good few years (20 ish) and that cracked too.

Maybe not a pure 'mechanical', but something i'll never forget.
Back in the early '90s i was lucky to have a teacher that somehow wangled taking us mountain biking for PE. (Doubly impressive as we were in Lincolnshire!)

One 'lesson' was cancelled because the weather was so filthy. But being teenagers we knew better and went out after school. There was a loop we would do that involved climbing a steep field and hanging on down a steep drop back to a footpath. Oooh, the thrills.

That afternoon i got to the top of the hill ahead of my mates and got stuck in ... but rapidly reached the limits of:
1) My Farmer John rear tyre
2) The cutting edge geometry of my Raleigh Massif
3) Any MTB skill i may have imagined i had.

As my huge 2 inch wide tractor tyre accumulated 5 inches of mud i skied out of control down the hill and realised i had two choices. Brick wall or barbed wire fence.
I picked barbed wire fence and managed to hit a post fairly square.
Mates looked down the hill pissing themselves at me crippled on the floor having worn my stem all over my groin and slashed my shellsuit (!) open on the fence.
I was pretty chuffed i'd come out of it without more physical damage or mashing my Scott helmet with Mint Sauce stickers. Until i picked up the bike. Forks were completely bent back. I still remember having to walk back to town pushing the bike on the back wheel and i've still got scars on my shin from the fence.

In the olden days when we used to put our saddle up and down manually(!), my QR seat-clamp bolt snapped. Had a bit of a rummage in the Camelbak and came up with this bodge - chain tool through the seat-clamp...

[img] [/img]

Snapped the top of my seat post off mid commute home one day, 2 miles into a 15 mile journey. Luckily managed to find a bike shop open reasonably nearby and bought a new post.

Shattered a rear Superstar rotor while riding a double black diamond trail in Queenstown NZ. When I eventually came to a stop after going otb the only part of the rotor left was the spider. Serves me right for using cheap crappy rotors.

I've snapped 3 different frames on bike holidays. The last one was at a tiny resort (silverstar) on day one of a bike trip in bc, so I just bought a complete bike off a lifty (it was the only bike for sale for 50 miles) and was back riding in under an hour

Single bolt on my saddle clamp sheared, plonking me firmly on the tarmac behind the bike, followed by a 7 mile ride standing up / dangerously perched on the seatpost.

Had a bit of a rummage in the Camelbak and came up with this bodge – chain tool through the seat-clamp…

Nice save.

Not bad in the grand scheme but my worst ones were a seat breaking forcing me to ride three miles home standing up and the same bike had the fork drop out when entering the house after a ride.