cyclist2000

HEY!!!. I did that before except it was a steel bike. I collapsed the front rim to the hub, bent the roof rack cross bar so badly that it dented the roof of my BMW. The frame was fine, unbent and I still ride it only thing broken was the rim and car rack. I was a little distracted by the last few minutes of the Bull vs Philly in the playoffs back when Jordan was playing. Totally forgot that my bike was on the car.

Edit: I assumed that the person was trying to park his car in the garage without taking the bike off first.

robtown

• while polishing a part - such as brake caliper - with bench buffer I heard a voop whooosh zing bing tinkle .. Yes a nut and at least a custom bolt was forcibly unwound and flew away
• repeat at some later time
• repeat again
• completely de-rust, polish, and mount chrome rim wheel before finding bent / warped rim
• cut brake or cable housing too short
• loose BB bearings down frame tube
• push pin totally out of chain link when breaking chain
• BB spindle in backwards
• trash BB shell threading trying to install cartridge (multiple frames) - fixed by LBS chasing threads with special tool
• used Crankset puller on drive side crank without removing bolt - stripping crank threads

MrMook

Yeah, I do this stuff all the time, with bikes and cars. Usually it's my own bike (or car) so when I mess it up too much, I accept my loss, and learn from it.

But take one of my current projects: a friends CraigsList "fixie"....er....fix-er-upper. Bent fork needs replacing. No big deal. I ride 5 miles through Brooklyn to the used parts shop, buy a fork for $20 (friend will pay me back, but I'm still out $20 while jobless). Ok, get back and realize that these wheels are not 700C, and the new fork I picked up is too short. Blast! Remove old fork, and bring it with me this time, find a perfect match. Get it home, sand it, paint it to match, grease up the races, carefully install bearings, and slide the fork into place. Fork in, frame upside down, start threading on the upper race from below....race siezes on the threads.....the hell?
Make a post on BF, and quickly informed that this British headset is threaded at 24tpi, while my Fuji fork is 26tpi. Grrrr.
Why can't I just get this bike out of my livingroom?!?

Other all-star moments:
- Ground off some crimped tabs on a "funky Norwegian steer tube" because I couldn't get the headset rings off after removing the stem. Take it to a shop months later after re-building the bike. "Look a this funny stem...it wobbles," said I. Bike shop guy quietly re-installs stem nut, pops out the wedge, and properly removes the stem, which I mistakenly thought was the steertube. I ended up grinding off part of the stem assembly, ruining the whole deal because I didn't know how to remove this type of stem.

- I've done the directional tire swap before on a front wheel. D'oh is right!
- Finished installing BB, cranks, and chain before noticing some stray BB bearings on the work bench that either fell out, or I didn't notice were missing.
- Just today...turning nipples the wrong way and wondering why my wheel is getting more and more untrue as I work.
- Sheared several of those brake cable retaining nuts.
- Marred the inner race on a set of pedals with my clumsy screwdriver-and-ham-fist bearing removal technique. Pedal never spun right after that.

noglider 

I used a bench grinder without goggles. Didn't hurt myself. At least not immediately. I felt a bit of dust go in my eye, but it didn't hurt.

I went to bed that night and woke up in the night. My eye hurt like hell. I couldn't sleep.

I took the subway to the hospital. It turns out that a fleck of metal had lodged in my cornea, and blinking pushed it in.

On the way home, after they scraped my eye clean, I was in such pain that a man gave me his seat. He could just see the pain in my face.

My boss never used goggles and never told us to use them. You can bet we all used them after that. Of course, the jerk didn't apologize to me whatsoever.

HillRider

Right idea, wrong numbers. Raleigh's proprietary threading was 26 tpi while nearly everyone else (except the French of course) uses 24tpi.

HillRider

I did better than that. I have an old (1993) Trek MTB that came with a cup-and-cone bb. When I first overhauled it I noticed the spindle had been installed with the longer end toward the non-drive side, which was obviously a mistake on Trek's part. Don't they pay attention on the shop floor?!

So, when I put the bb back together, I installed the spindle in the "correct" orientation and then installed the crank arms. As soon as I tried to turn the crank, the nds crankarm hit the chainstay. Apparently, this frame has such fat chainstays that a very long bb spindle was needed and had to be installed "backwards" to clear everything. So much for cursing those "idiots" at the factory.

zzyzx_xyzzy

Oh, but the label on the hub has to be facing the right way....

pat5319

I got in a hurry one time and broke off a cable Guide on an ITALIAN made Masi Prestige once, thank God for superglue
=

joejack951

I was tightening the crank bolt on the drive side of my brand new Stronglight carbon crankset (5 years ago on my first bike build) and mistook a chamfer on the bottom bracket shoulder for a gap. The instructions said to tighten until the crankset was flush to the shoulder so I kept tightening and then I heard a horrible "crack". Luckily for me, I had only sheared the flange off the crank bolt and stripped the threads off the bolt. No damage to the bottom bracket threads, crank arm, or bike. Phew!

JohnDThompson 

Wow. And it held?

MrMook

*sigh* I mixed it up in the other thread too. Before I go to the bike shop, I'm reading these posts and writing it on my hand before I make another stupid mistake for this thread

seawind161

Please, someone, tell me I'm not the only one who can do 99% of a build without problems, and then install the bottle cages upside down...

canopus 

+1

noglider 

Well, I've probably put toe clips on backwards at some point.

HillRider

I know I've threaded toe straps the wrong way. Hard to reach the buckle when it's on the inside of the pedal.

mobike_moexcite

I have done this as well, but what's worse is I noticed once I had the tube and tire off the rim so I'm halfway done, sigh.