Almost Pro Bike Mechanic

Didn’t tighten my cog or lockring enough. Decided totry brakeless for the first time ever.

Going downhill the cog and lockring tore the hub thread to hell and I had to slow down by dropping the feet and letting the spd’s slow me.

Always tighten them up insanely tight now

Tried to remove an old cheap plastic bb cup and the front of it just disintegrated, leaving me to try and get the rest out with a screwdriver and pliers… few damaged threads later the new bb cup wont go in and i need to get my bb faced.

Not my finest moment.

A reputable bike shop told me the thread on my hub was stripped, but they had managed to get my cog and lockring on, but couldn’t guarantee how long it had.

I wasn’t up for that punt, so I got a new rear wheel. I set about taking the cog off the old hub and it was pretty stuck. So stuck, in fact, I was quite literally jumping on my chain whip to try and get it free. It did eventually budge with quite a loud protest, but I wish I knew how stuck it was before I bought a new wheel.

Cracked a carbon frame by clamping too tight

I’ve been keeping my italian threaded veloce bb tightened with multigrips for the last few years. it’s pretty embarrassing to look at now. all smoothed over.

cutting a steerer tube down for the first time i cut straight through the star nut, sort of miraculously i got exactly between the star bits, i did wonder at one point why it got a bit more difficult, but then it got easier again so i just kept going

broke the handle of one tool and destroyed the teeth of another trying to remove a well seized BB. a day soaking in WD40 and a longer breaker bar sorted it out.

have also forgotten to tighten the stem bolts on a threadless fork the other day. upper body rotated the bars right, bike kept on going straight.

crank extraction fail, totally threaded (yep, washer in).

then proceeded to whack the f*ck out of it, bending chainrings etc so i couldn’t try the ‘ride around the block’ trick.

so out comes trusty grinder. thought i’d got away with it, but when dropping off frame at mechanics for a new build i was asked “what are all these metal shavings? you been grinding something?”

i can laugh about it now, wasn’t very funny at the time.

^ Looks like its salvagable.

you were looking for some 600 cranks weren’t you? you can have these for cheap…

haha man you win this thread!
That image is epic!

Late on a friday arvo bleeding some avid brakes, pushing the syringe at the calliper, wondering why nothing is happening at the lever… try again, check syringes, clamps etc

then realise the syringe at the lever is on the front lever and the other syringe is on the rear calliper.

No harm done, look around to see if anybody saw, all clear, swap syringes over.

This happened to a mate in similar circumstances. He had a lockring they couldn’t get off but were unsure about it, so the lbs recommended double lockring. Coming down a hill, destroyed thread and he had to bail onto the pavement/grass

Thanks, this brightened up my Friday arvo!

I destroyed the lockring thread on an ENO hub by using a Phil lockring on it.

And only recently I cut a carbon steerer perfectly straight and neat but forgot to take the compression plug out first.

While waiting for my Primate SSCX frame to turn up a few years ago I was researching all the correct methods of assembly for everything. Mesmerised by the red ano TRP Euro-X cantis I assumed it would be easy to set these things up. Assembly commenced, cut steerer, everything going well, wheels, bb, crank, chain etc. last but not least the cantis. After way too many years in the Navy I count swearing as a skill right up there with inappropriate behaviour and drinking good single malt but I have never sworn so much as setting up those bastards. The ever popular sweat rolling down brow coupled with claims of, “these c…ts cannot be this hard to set up” came up a few times along with other abusive phrases. Of course I could have read the instructions.

I have said to Tarn if I ever even mention cantis in reference to another build for myself, punch me in the face a lot. Stupidly my next is a lugged CX for myself and he is a big dude. Will hurt.

This is something I would never say to Tarn. Can’t imagine what one punch from him would do to my beautiful face.

I suggest going for discs, save yourself some pain.

I am hoping his inner calm from ridiculous amounts of yoga may save me from a wired jaw. I want to like discs but there is something about exposed cables that does it for me.

I’m pretty sure Tarn bent the hour glass stays on you bike with his bare hands.

Just his pinkys, just his pinkys!