[Closed] What’s the fastest you have broken an expensive thing?

I rolled a company car, probably wrote it off in a second or two....

Opened a brand new Rapha Country jersey with a pair of scissors. Won't be doing [i]THAT[/i] again.

Susan Kay's heart in 0.45 seconds

Snapped a carbon Lapierre on the 5th or 6th ride.

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footflaps - Member
I rolled a company car, probably wrote it off in a second or two...

Pfft, everyone's rolled the company car...that doesn't count. 😆

I worked opposite a Porsche garage for a while.

Someone unloading a Cayenne from a transporter seemed to have a 'it's the brake! it's the brake! Oh, it's the accelerator! moment and drove across the bonnets of the three 911's that they'd just also unloaded from it.

All the vehicles still had the white factory protection on their paintwork.

She was led off sobbing.

Not that expensive but cracked my car windscreen. Got a new windscreen. Got some new wiper blades to fit after the window fitter had left. Twanged the wiper arm (without the blade on) onto the new window and smashed it. Got the window replaced again.

One of my old colleagues wrote off a brand new car (<50km on clock) by getting forward and reverse confused, driving into a static caravan, which was also quite new, knocking it off it's blocks and crushing the bonnet of the car.

wrote off a brand new car (<50km on clock) by getting forward and reverse confused

unloading a Cayenne from a transporter seemed to have a 'it's the brake! it's the brake! Oh, it's the accelerator! moment

Back on topic, when I was a kid I broke my main xmas pressie off my parents within a few hours for several years running, thank **** for argos no quibble return policy.
I also wrote off my first mtb within ~6hours of collecting, thankfully the nice man at the LBS got me a new one on warranty.

I got an england kit for xmas when I was a kid. Dad washed it and then I ironed it.......
All I had was socks and shorts after that. Broke my little heart, dad couldn't afford another.

My dad had a minor bump in his car repaired. Colelcted it from the garage and dragged it along the low wall as he exited so he just followed the road back around again, pulled back over and asked them to fox the new bump.

Company car - delivered by driver, I took him to Temple Meads station. Woman crashed into the back of it. Creased the roof, new hatchback, subframes, bumpers etc. If i remember rightly about 4ks worth.
I had done 1.4 miles in the car ....

Ducati 998s. Brand new, 300 miles on the clock. Including get there. Trach day at Cadwell. Everyone hoping I dropped it for being a flash git.
I dropped it ....

Uni photo technician lent me the faculty's best camera - a Mamiya medium format something as my mate and I had some studio shots to do. Within 5 minutes of him leaving, it had toppled off the tripod and made a good jigsaw impression on the concrete floor. 😳

The technician made a point of saying 'smashing' everytime he saw us after that.

Brand new TLD full face, lasted 3 rides.

To be fair, it did it's job well. I was in intensive care but my head was ok...

Friend of mine put his freshly restored MG Midget over a berm and into a field less than a week after getting it. He tied to take a bend too fast, then tried to make for the escape route, then thought he could still make the corner.

He was half right on both counts.

Poor car. It took ages to fix properly.

Bit different but my parents traded their car in for a new one.

We did all the paperwork so the new car was ours and the old car was theirs.

The embarrassed salesman then found out that the new one failed it's PDI so they had to wait 2 days while it was sorted. He arranged for us to be insured in our old car for 2 days while we waited.

I wrote it off that night driving over an hump back bridge and an XR3i coming the other way.

Crossmax Enduro rear wheel - 10 miles

Picked it up from MP3 repair last Thursday, broke it again first ride out, .Sunday

Stripped the bottom bracket thread on my new frame 10 minutes are unwrapping it. 🙁

Back in the day I cut down the fork column on a pair of Manitou Forks - too short, so had a brand new ornamental pair of forks. Took ages to save up for a new pair.

Measure Twice Cut Once !!

I thought I was going fast when I broke my S Works Enduro frame but not as fast as Kevin when he did his two days later. That was an expensive holiday in the Alps

Brand new S-Works Prevail helmet in about 50 yards. Unwrapped it, put it on, race started, cleat failed in my shoe leading to a massive crash mid-sprint. Cracked and ruined, but did the job. There's a video of it somewhere.

Bloke at work with a brand new Omega Speedmaster watch. Sitting as his desk reading a watch forum he says "apparently if you set the time to this, and then move the date forward, ****"!

Shop I was working at brand new epic demo when they first came out, snapped and bent frame jumping something a touch too big 😳

The boss who was leading the ride didn't care 😀

Hired a motorhome. Crashed it within an hour. Excess down the drain.

Bought my first ever windsurf board. Loaded it lovingly into the car. Over the back seat and into the passenger side. It was a tight fit but it went right up against the windscreen. Which was fine until I closed the boot, and pushed the windsurfer through the front windscreen by an inch.

another one here for a Crossmax disaster (XL's this time) took them out of the box, went to remove the 135mm adapter to change to 142mm....managed to tear a chunk of metal out of the bolt with hardly any force whatsoever.
two weeks later I have just been told by a Mavic rep to just have another go (a pair of moleys as tight as it would go and I managed it thankfully)

tomd - Member
Not that expensive but cracked my car windscreen. Got a new windscreen. Got some new wiper blades to fit after the window fitter had left. Twanged the wiper arm (without the blade on) onto the new window and smashed it. Got the window replaced again.

I did one of those laughs that comes out of your nose

mainly because it sounds exactly like the sort of thing that I do

After ages saving up for it I finally bought a HID Lupine back when they were the dog's danglies.

After leaving it on charge whilst I was at work I came home very excited to give it its' first proper spin.

A bit too excited...

Dropped it...

Onto flagstones...

Lens and HID bub shattered into a million pieces.

New bulb was about 2/3rds the price of the light.

Hadn't even been fitted to a bike yet.

Ouch

Not me but my old boss dropped an £85,000 laminator off a forklift about 30 seconds after he signed for it... Oh how I laughed.. 😈

I snapped a brand new £2700 Trek Madone 6.9 ssl frame at the chain stay about 2 miles into its maiden voyage. The warranty replacement lasted about 15 before snapping.

Apparently if you could find one that year that hadn't snapped you'd done well though.

Oh, I also have a windscreen story. "Won" a free RSJ off a site I was working on, ideal for our project at home. Slid it into the van through the back doors and straight through the screen. The excess was £75, the RSJ was worth about £45. Oh how I laughed.....

Brand new bike. OTb within 20 metres of the front door, the purple anodised* bar ends snapped the end of the handle bar off. It was Christmas day so had to wait for the shops to open. I wasn't a happy 8 year old.

*guess the year!

Ferrari on a track day (oh get one real lap yourself without guidence)

Broke down after I set the fastest lap lol

Wasn't my fault.

Hire car with less than 100 miles on the clock, I was the middle car in a 3 car sandwich. Technically I don't suppose I broke it as not my fault, just was driving when it happened.

At work we had just had a van turn up with a back panel and hearth that a customer had waited 4 weeks for as it was made to order. Not me but one of the other lads lifted the back panel off and it split straight down the middle. He hadn't even signed for it but had to as the delivery driver had watched him do it. Customer had to wait another 4 weeks for a replacement.

Stripped the bottom bracket thread on my new frame 10 minutes are unwrapping it.

Snap. Just take a BB spacer out 😉

marcus7 - Member

Not me but my old boss dropped an £85,000 laminator off a forklift about 30 seconds after he signed for it... Oh how I laughed..

Not quite as expensive but 2 years ago one of my engineers was offloading a 1000ltr IBC container of food grade synthetic blower oil, he rammed the forks straight through the base not the carrier. it drained straight into our yard storm drain.
£13.50 per ltr and £5000 enviro clean up 🙁

Oh how we ripped him about that 😮

Ploughed my tallboy LTc into an immovable object on its second ride, was in Spain so carried on using it for the rest of the week, warranty replacement when I got back at a reasonable cost

This looks expensive