Your most expensive/embarrassing or otherwise memorable maintenance mistake?

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Anyone dropped any real clangers during maintenance? I don't mean the standard stuff like "use the crank extractor before undoing the bolt" (I have a bike to sort at the moment that a previous owner has done just that, looking at the non-existent state of the crank threads)

Reminded of this in another thread talking about using a big mallet, I recall years ago having been given my first "proper" watch for Xmas - a very nice gold and leather Accurist and not from the cheapest end either. But me being me I forgot to take it off when fettling an old clunker. Driving in a new cotter pin - being none too gentle with the hammer, I hadn't fastened the strap properly. The watch landed right on the cotter pin just on the downstroke of the hammer.....:cry:

My stupidist was my first go at fixing my bike - an old clunker again, bought 2nd hand and the stem way above the safety mark - it twisted and the bars came out (on a busy dual carriageway!) - that wasn't my fault I didn't set it up, but anyway, bought a new stem and swapped the bars, like you do on a front loader. But being a clunker it wasn't a front loader stem, it never occured to take the grips and levers off, rather I prised the stem open with the jaws of two spanners, and used a mole grip to pull the stem back into shape. DOH! To be fair, I was a kid then. I always think back to doing that whenever I look at someone who appears to have zero mechanical aptitude trying to fix things.
 

fossyant

Ride It Like You Stole It!
Location
South Manchester
Stuck BB in a frame. Couldn't get it out at all. Decided to 'retire' the frame and get a better one - old frame was an inch too big. So retired a 531c for a brand new 653. Upgrade !
 

LosingFocus

Lost it, got it again.
When I was 12 or so, I cleaned my new bike. Car shampoo so it was all glossy. Then I oiled and polished the bits the moved. All the bits that moved. Including the braking system. And the rims. with Turtle Wax. :B)
 

Jimmy Doug

If you know what's good for you ...
Turned my bike into a dragster bike when I was about 10. Stripped off all the paint, and painted it black (but it was gate paint so it didn't last too well!), set up the brakes so they rubbed on the tyres (producing what I thought was a great smell of rubber) ... and other mods I can't remember now. It was a brand new bike - my parents bought it for Christmas (Raleigh Roadrunner). My folks were none too pleased!

Driving in a new cotter pin - being none too gentle with the hammer,

Showing your age there! I haven't seen a cotter pin in .... oh ages!
 

kopikat

Regular
I remember @ 50 years ago, when vespas were popular among certain groups of youngsters, my elder brother, who was below the legal driving age, had purchsed said beast and was spending his spare time and paper round money 'doin it up'. One sunny sunday afternoon, he had a friend or two around, showing off his prized possesion. He then showed his skill by riding the scooter around the garden several times, upon which, his friends wanted a go...................can you see it coming. One such friend jumped on the scooter, revved the engine within an inch of its life, and dropped the clutch. UP went the front wheel and whizz went the back wheel, then down came the front with such a force that it bounced right up into a wheelie position again. The afore mentioned friend slid backwards off the vespa, which continued across the garden, riderless, heading straight for our mother who was on her hands and knees weeding a flower bed. Apart from the fella on his face on the grass we all screamed at mum to move, She looked around to see the vespa coming towards her ,and froze. Thank god the bike then slewed to one side and went full frontal into the wall of the house. Needless to say, that was the first and last motorised bike that came into our back garden, and brothers paper round money was a long time paying for the rendering of the house wall to be repaired. It never really looked the same after that.
 

Teuchter

Über Member
I've managed to get away with most of the things I've done on pushbikes (touch wood). Motorbikes are however another story.

About 15 years ago I was staying in a ground floor bedsit in Aldershot. Landlord was away for the weekend so I covered my room in plastic sheeting, put a plank over the front steps and wheeled my motorbike (a Kawasaki Zephyr 550) into my room for a day of servicing the valves. Music on, I proceeded to remove the carbs, valve cover and overhead camshafts to gain access to the valve shims, some of which needed replacing. I fitted the replacements and eventually after much skinning of knuckes got it all back together.

Would the bike start? No chance. I had to wheel it back out to the street and get the bus to work the following day. A mate suggested that I may have mixed up the camshafts but I insisted that I had been very careful to mark them front and back when they were removed however after a week of trying everything else, I gave up, stripped it all again and swapped the camshafts. The bike started first push of the button after that and my mate still reminds me of it whenever he wants to call my mechanical skills into question.

It seems experience doesn't stop this mechanical stupidity however. Less said about the screw up I made while changing my motorbike's brake pads last weekend the better, even though I've done the same job flawlessly dozens of times in the past.
 
Bikes - nothing really.

You want a biggie (though you may have to be techie/geeky to follow this one), I was clearing out some old computer ID's off Active Directory prior to a rebuild of the machine (techie alert - they had had a new motherboard but had to go back in under the identical machine name, so delete and recreate exact same name) and after you delete each one, the cursor moves back to the tree branch - OK so far. After a couple of deletes, I could not locate the next name - find it in the wrong OU... no problem delete it and it can be relocated afterwards, only the OU was the main "school" OU. Cursor on "school", looking at the next one I want to delete and fail to realise I have not selected it... sit and watch +500 computer accounts and 15 non-DC server accounts get deleted... Regretfully the DC had instantaneous replication...

Walked into my boss' meeting and told him I had "just screwed up big time". Only boss was not techie and the other person in the meeting was. It took about half a hour to explain to my boss the implications of having deleted each and every computer off the entire network...
When the headmaster came to my boss sometime later and asked what's wrong with the network, my boss simply told him one of the 'primary' servers had crashed and we were working on it. He never said another word about it... by the end of the day we had the entire network restored (non-authoritive restore) and full functional before 5pm... I had not expected to have a job by the end of the day, yet my boss never said another word. needless to say I got a lot of jokes about the delete key and some kind sole removed it from my keyboard the following morning. Lesson learnt, don't do server work when feeling unwell!

Strangley I went from not really appreciating my non-techie approaching retirement boss (maths teacher) to really appreciating him and putting up with having to explain everything several times over. 2nd best boss I have had.
 

RaRa

Well-Known Member
Location
Dorset
Disc brakes plus WD40 - was before I knew any better. Certainly made for an "interesting" ride the next day.
 

baldycyclist

Über Member
Location
Sunderland
made a honk out of mum's old shopper
put cow bars on
couldnt tighten the stem enough and it acted like a bucking bronco when being ridden
Taped foam on the saddle to make it like a cushion
Sprayed it with all the ends of cans from decent make overs
wish it was still alive today!!!
 
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