gaucho777 

@pcb, the banana as replacement for grease is classic!

#4, "Clamped frame in workstand over a top tube cable guide..." Done that, too. Oh, that sinking feeling. #2: Fortunately, I haven't dented any frames with flying objects, but I've had a couple close calls with objects let loose by the buffing wheel.

--

How about...proudly takes time to do a photo shoot of newly built bike, only to later realize (ok, get called out by a forum member) that the water bottle cages are upside down?

thumpism 

You could always claim that they are to hold chain oilers, which must be mounted upside down to flow correctly. These are occasionally found on motorcycles.

SJX426 

My bottle cages are oriented right but the content is not appropriate!
[IMG]P1020207, on Flickr[/IMG]

noglider 

@darkreaver, that sounds like something I would do, and I might have done it, too. It just makes total sense to me.

And I agree that the banana trick is brilliant, @pcb.

pcb 

You betcha! Just try packing bearings with smushed energy bars----ain't gonna happen.

And, yeah, I have installed those sweet King Iris cages, or similar clones, upside-down a couple of times. Caught it before I snapped the pix, though, so no public shaming at the time.

The frame I violated in my workstand was a Peugeot, a brand we didn't carry. The rep was an independent, so he visited us to sell other stuff. I cowardly told him "the braze-on just popped off." "No problem, happens all the time," he said, then opened up his trunk which contained some propane torches, cans o' spray paint, and a box o' braze-ons. He brazed on a new cable guide, touched it up with the spray paint, looked like new.

It wasn't my proudest moment, but it also vindicated our decision not to carry Peugeot.

Lascauxcaveman 

Well, that is just effing epic! (On his part, not yours, mind you.)

Slightspeed

Restoring my '73 Super Course, I was in a hurry to get to a vintage ride and re-used an old 10 speed chain. I couldn't find the package of new break off link pins, so I re-used the old one. 4 miles out on the ride, the chain and crank locked up and wouldn't pedal forward. The old link pin had worked out and jammed against the chainwheel. I took a quick look, and started walking back to my car. Along the way, I was hating walking an almost functional bike, and saw a big rock along the road. Using a small wrench as a back stop, I pounded the pin back in, and rode somewhat gingerly back to the car. Next day, my new KMC chain arrived from Amazon.

mountaindave 

Yesterday my ride lasted exactly 1-1/4 miles when my 47 year-old Sedis chain exploded on an uphill. Somehow I managed to ride 100 miles+ on gravel and serious hills last season before I put it away. Don't know if a pin was just installed poorly, or it just got tired (I lost an entire link). Moral of the story: there's a reason chains are considered "consumable." Not everything has to be vintage.

belacqua

Last week working on my 86 Schwinn Passage, just switching stuff around for the f of it, noticed the front straddle cable was frayed. No replacement handy so I decided to switch cantis.

New brake mounting bolts didn't want to go far enough into the post to cinch the brake body down. I kept cranking on it. Sheared off the bolt head, leaving the bolt shaft stuck in the post. Tried to drill it out without any clear plan in mind, just rage wrenching.

Donored everything off the Passage onto a very iffy (Friday afternoon at Carlton) Super Course frame. I guess the original reason I was on the garage was I wanted a SS beater with clearance and a dynamo setup.

Just putting a photo in here for your trouble


Cooled off and decided to order a $40 set of screw extractors and cobalt drill bits, try to undo the damage to the Passage. Set arrived this week. Put the extractor in the tap wrench, gave it a quarter turn, and snapped off the extractor in the hole I'd drilled in the sheared canti bolt.

Then I blunted the new drill bit trying to drill through the broken extractor tip.

Can't even take pictures, too ashamed. I put the frameset in the rafters. Just had to tell somebody.

noglider 

A friend of a friend sent me his hubs for me to build a new pair of wheels for him. The freewheel was still attached. He didn't know to take it off before removing the spokes and rim. So I tried to remove the freewheel by attaching spokes to the non drive side. I put the freewheel extractor in my vise and the freewheel in the extractor. I turned the wheel. The hub shell crumbled. Yikes.

Drillium Dude 

Yeah, you basically twist-stressed the center portion of the hub past its failure point - of course, it was never meant to take that sort of load in the first place!

DD

cudak888 

I've done this before, even with high flange hubs, and never had anything like this.

Yes, there's a possibility of damage, but a tear like that is absolutely extreme. It looks as if the aluminum had some sort of stress on it before, given that perfect Z shape that it split in.

-Kurt

noglider 

Kurt, I don't think so. Remember, I (mistakenly) used the NDS so I twisted the middle of the shell. In retrospect, this had to happen.

Splendidtutiona

Yeah, looking at it, you can tell that the torque was applied to the freewheel (duh) to get it off.

A solid rod will break at a 45 degree angle. Obviously the hub body is a "tube" and not solid. And the walls being thin, the "45 degree angle" is hard to see, but its manifests as an angle in the crack.

Let me back up: a tube (hollow rod) will split axially (lengthwise) when failure occurs. Basically the tube wall splits due to the tension forces placed on it. but that split will be at a 45 degree angle from outer wall to inner wall Meaning if you cut the hub on half (separating the right flange from the left, directly in the center) and looked at the nature of the crack, it would be at an angle. you can kind of see that in the image. as you look into the crack, the side toward the top of the photo looks like there is an angle there.

Also the crack is larger at the freewheel side than at the non-freewheel side, indicating that the freewheel side with where the torques was applied while the other side was "fixed"

The "Z" shape comes in because those cracks at 90 degrees from the axial one are exactly where the flange radius meets the straight "tube" part of the hub. This caused a change in the forces applied, and the crack changed orientation.

This doesn't mean that there wasn't other damage at that location that weakened the whole things, but aluminum is, honestly, terrible material to build anything out of (bike, airplanes, and some cars use it a lot because it is strong enough and VERY light). It's not very strong, has terrible fatigue qualities (compared to other metals) and can be finicky to work with. But it's so light, that it continues to be alluring to work with, and ultimately works great for things like some bike parts, airplane skins, engine blocks (kind of) etc. so don't think I'm just an Al hater! It just doesn't hold up well to the kinds of stress you put it under, noglider. Not trying to rub it in. I've stripped more than my fair share of bolts that were otherwise fine (torque wrench? we don't need no stinking torque wrench!) and other such.

Sorry for the engineering lesson. Not trying to rub in that you probably broke this hub, again, this is the "boneheaded stuff we've done" thread and we all have SOME story. More hoping if someone sees this and has a similar things happen at, say, a shop and they try to sell you they didn't break it, we can have some info to refute that.

Happiness and Smiles
Splendidtutional.

SJX426 

The oil hole clip didn't help????!!!!

malcala622

When you don't measure stack height before attempting to install a super record headset.

thumpism 

Or as bad, you mismeasure, on a Serotta.

dmarkun

I just discovered this thread and what a wonderful catharsis. Thank you everybody. I myself have too much to add and the extent of it would be boring, and not just with bicycles - involving concrete, automatic transmissions, babies and flammable substances (but luckily not all at the same time).

thook

i don't recall making any genuine bonehead moves with bicycles for quite a while. nothing noteworthy, anyway. plenty with cars, though

nope...the last real bonehead move i recall making was in my bmx days. "that gooseneck looks stripped?! oh, the handlebars'll be fine. just tighten the h*** out of'em!" two ditch jumps later..... midair with no control. poor budding boy parts

mountaindave 

Or when you buy a take-off fork with lots of extra steerer tube because you want to run a roller bearing headset that takes more stack, then cut the steerer tube to fit the new headset perfectly but don’t leave room for extras like a decaleur...

cudak888 

Was having nothing but trouble installing a Sturmey three-speed hub - with a built-in drum brake - into a bike with sliding vertical dropouts.

After struggling to get the two sliding drops aligned, I was able to get the anti-rotation washers and both axle nuts on (both are captive on these dropouts - think huge lawyer lips), the drum brake torque arm bolted in, and the Sturmey rotary shifter cable worked into the narrow gap between the dropout and the hub.




That's when I realized the chain was still dangling from the front chainring.

-Kurt

Drillium Dude 

When you haven't a clue what you're doing, stuff like this happens:



DD

canyoneagle

took me a moment to see it.........
Yikes!!!!

himespau 

IS that one barrel adjuster screwed into another? Or are the pad holders in there backwards?

markk900

Finally saw it! Whoopsie....