Most stupid bike maintenance mistake ever?

Underscore

So the braking surfaces on the rear wheel of my commuter (a Spesh Sirrus) have worn to the point where the wheel needs replacing. I order an Open Sport rim, Deore hub and Sapim spokes and spend a few hours over a few evenings building my first ever wheel. I'm really pleased with it - nice and true with good, even spoke tensions.

I drop the old wheel off last night and swap the tube/tyre across before inserting the new wheel. Hang on, it's a bit tricky to get it to drop into the drop outs... it looks a bit wide... let me just measure them... oh, 130mm... bu99er! MTB drive train but road hubs!

Yes, I know that I should have measured before buying the bits - measure twice, buy once - but at least I will be getting more experience of wheel building!

Luckily, it looks like a Tiagra hub will allow me to reuse the same spokes.

_

P.S. If anyone is interested in a silver, 36h non-disc Deore hub which has been laced into a wheel but never ridden, please get in touch. Actually, if anyone wants the whole wheel, get in touch too - but quickly!

roundthebend

Ouch! But you at least have a nice wheel which you can sell, and the experience of putting one together which sounds pretty daunting to a casual cyclist like myself.

I once adjusted my brake pad positions badly such that a small (yet significant) bit of the pad was missing the rim and touching the tire! Didn't notice it when the pad was new, but once it had worn down enough this "lip" ended up rubbing right through the tyre and giving me a knackered tyre. It was a new tyre as well. :oops:

Greg T

Seat post was stuck . . . . .

Nothing would shift it.

I turned the frame upside down over the corner of a bench and hit the clamp repeatedly with a hammer downwards - five mins of hammering had the desired result!

Out comes the errant tube.....



And My top tube was bent like a banana . . . . . . . .

I have stuff living in my fridge that could have worked that out......

desmosedici

Was trying to adjust the seat height of my Ritchey Breakaway titanium. Carbon seatpost refused to budge. Cue lots of WD-40, hammering, cursing etc until I realise the Breakaway frame has 2 bolts holding the seatpost in place.

Underscore

Thanks for your posts. It's good to know that I'm not the only one to do dumb things!

_

snooks

I removed the crank arm of my Raleigh Maverick, not with a crank arm remover, with a hammer :shock: not only would it never stay in place long enough to survive a test ride when I was trying to flog it, it also gained a permanent wobble, before the crank arm would drop off.

Seemed like a good idea at a time.

After nicking my new bike for a laugh and promptly tripping as he was running off with it he fell on the back wheel turning it taco shaped, my mate thought he could save money by building me another wheel. Working on the idea that "all spokes are the same length, surely all you have to do is tighten up the spokes by the same amount...How hard can it be?" he said with a cheery smile.

He found out after wasting a sunny weekend sitting in the garden trying to build his first ever wheel. He had to admit it was harder than it looked and he'd stump up the cash to take it to the LBS for them to sort out his mess

desweller

Loosened off my quill stem for some reason, forgot to tighten it up. Went rolling off down the road, front wheel went one way, bars went the other, I went straight down at about 5mph wondering what the hell had happened.

redvee

Grabbed a lift with a friend in his car with my bike which meant both wheels off. Got the bike out, wheels on and rode off and when I got to the end of the road I remembered the straddle cables on the brakes needed hooking back up.

crazy88

How did that one end redvee? Sounds like it could have been nasty!!!

Haven't had any maintenance fails yet, but relatively new to cycling. Oh, and i've just finished building my commuter up, so no doubt tomorrow evening i'll be in hospital

flimflam_machine

The left-hand crank on my bike came loose so I took it off completely, cleaned up the BB tapers, put it back on and tightened it up nice and snug... at 90-degrees to the right-hand crank.

Worse still I didn't even have a crank puller at that stage so I had to take it into Halfords to get it removed.

I fully intend never to make that mistake again, but I went and bought a crank puller just in case.

sketchley

Years ago as a kid (15) I worked in a LBS as a saturday job. I had no formal training and most of the work involved assembling flat pack bikes. Changing Tryes, fitting break pads etc. Complicated stuff like BB, Cranks, Gears, Wheel Building was done by the boss.

I got fired after one guy came back to shop 5 mins after picking his bike up following a tyre change only to have the back wheel fall off. :oops:

crazy88

To be fair sketchley, he should have been fired for having the need to get his tyre changed!

robz400

Over tightened the seat post collar bolt and snapped it clean in two. Off to lbs bought a new collar, got home and did exactly the same thing again! :oops:

Needless to say I am now the proud owner of a torque wrench and have instructed the mrs to hit me with it if I ever go near a bike without one agian.

bmca2010

totally ignoring that my clipless pedal bearings felt like death,

result, bearings seized, entire pedal came of the crank and 6 miles of fixed 1 legged cycling

unixnerd

Bought a used set of Ksyrium Elite wheels, good price and they looked the business. I'd checked in advance they were Shimano freehub. Get the front wheel, fit tyre and install on bike. Fit tyre to rear wheel then find the cassette won't fit as they're actually Campag, Doh!

Valy

Failing to take a ST crank off after considerable effort. A trip to the LBS to remove the hat from the crank - where it was pretty much fused into the metal.... and after that it was sorted.

Several weeks later I realised that the I was using the octalink "hat" on top of the rod so all the effort I thought I was using trying to get it off went into fusing it together.

Also from a similar time - undoing the LH crank by a few turns but then deciding not to take it off and forgetting about it and riding the bike. :oops:

EDIT: So yeah, that;s what happens when you don't think.

nicklouse

Underscore it does not sound like a mistake, just forward planing for your new build.

bigmat

Taking bike to LBS for a service... gears were spot on, now skipping around all over the place, have sought advice from Campag importer as LBS can't fix it and reckon there must be "compatibility issues" with my components (funnily enough it worked before...). Importer says should all work fine and I have been advised to take it to Condor for them to sort out. Cost to date - £69, plus whatever Condor charge me. Not happy

flicksta

Fit new set of wheels. Take out for spin. PF strikes. It's OK, I'm only a few hundred metres from home. New tube. PF again. New tube, PF again. 5 tubes in, I realise I haven't adjusted the drop on the brakes, which are now clamping on the tyre rather than the rim.

asprilla

BigMat wrote:

Taking bike to LBS for a service... (

This.

Belt drive was over tensioned and snapped, and thedisc pads so badly aligned that they needed replacing.

sketchley

BigMat wrote:

Taking bike to LBS for a service... gears were spot on, now skipping around all over the place, have sought advice from Campag importer as LBS can't fix it and reckon there must be "compatibility issues" with my components (funnily enough it worked before...). Importer says should all work fine and I have been advised to take it to Condor for them to sort out. Cost to date - £69, plus whatever Condor charge me. Not happy

I'd be asking LBS to either pay the Condor bill, or refund you, or offer you a genrous credit / discount in store.

desweller

BigMat wrote:

Taking bike to LBS for a service... gears were spot on, now skipping around all over the place, have sought advice from Campag importer as LBS can't fix it and reckon there must be "compatibility issues" with my components (funnily enough it worked before...). Importer says should all work fine and I have been advised to take it to Condor for them to sort out. Cost to date - £69, plus whatever Condor charge me. Not happy

Dude. One of those that will keep getting bounced around.

My money's on the rear mech outer loop being too short. A few of us on here have had that problem (mostly with Shimano stuff though).

MaxwellBygraves

DesWeller wrote:

Loosened off my quill stem for some reason, forgot to tighten it up. Went rolling off down the road, front wheel went one way, bars went the other, I went straight down at about 5mph wondering what the hell had happened.

This made me laugh. Bet it felt like you were having a funny turn!

pastryboy

Destroyed a chainset when I used the wrong type of crank extractor (or rather I left the 'other' bit on when it wasn't needed).

Twice I've fitted rear tyres and completely forgotten to install rim tape. First time I did it I got loads of random deflations and couldn't work out why as it kept pumping back up fine.

redvee

crazy88 wrote:

How did that one end redvee? Sounds like it could have been nasty!!!

All that happened was the life of the original Shimano SPD shoes I lived and died in was reduced by about 6 months when I put both down to stop.

ddraver

Drilling out Crank bolts having never drilled metal before - had the dill going full speed with me applying reasonable but not excessive pressure - Cleats got so hot they melted the plastic sole of the shoe and sank into the sole.....

Alex Thirkill

Screwing up the threads on the disc brake post-mount... hard to fix.

They should bond a steel helicoil insert in there. Magnesium is far too soft to take a thread...

redvee

ddraver wrote:

Drilling out Crank bolts having never drilled metal before - had the dill going full speed with me applying reasonable but not excessive pressure - Cleats got so hot they melted the plastic sole of the shoe and sank into the sole.....

Done that but now I use a sharp drill not a blunt one. :oops:

nicklouse

Alex Thirkill wrote:

Screwing up the threads on the disc brake post-mount... hard to fix.

They should bond a steel helicoil insert in there. Magnesium is far too soft to take a thread...

Nope they should have stayed with IS mounts.

janm399

BigMat wrote:

Taking bike to LBS for a service... gears were spot on, now skipping around all over the place, have sought advice from Campag importer as LBS can't fix it and reckon there must be "compatibility issues" with my components (funnily enough it worked before...). Importer says should all work fine and I have been advised to take it to Condor for them to sort out. Cost to date - £69, plus whatever Condor charge me. Not happy

My guess would be that your derailleur is not shifting all the way to the lowest position: so instead of shifting from lowest to 2nd lowest, you're in fact shifting from 2nd lowest to 3rd lowest. The parallelogram sizes in most derailleurs will then mean that there's to much or too little travel between the gears, giving you the skipping in almost every gear.
Try removing the gear cable and checking that it jumps all the way to the lowest gear. Tune to align perfectly, then wire in the gear cable and tune for normal shifting.

itboffin

mistakes me ...? never!!!!

honest