Home Mechanics – Dumbest thing you have done

[Raymo853]

I fixed something this morning that I did that was just dumb. I routed my front derailleur cable over my chain stay bridge. It worked but the shifting took a lot of force and it rubbed off the paint. This was only #2 in my dumb list, the dumbest was over torquing a two piece crank leading to the arms falling off near the end of a long ride. (Team mates pushed me the 10 miles to home)

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[EasyRider]

Cross threading a bottom bracket is easily the dumbest thing I’ve done. I had the bike turned upside down and was replacing the original loose ball bottom bracket on a Trek 930 with a Shimano cartridge. With the bike upside down, I must have gotten confused about the threading direction. Then I screwed the plastic piece in first, cross-threading it. Of course, I didn’t notice any resistance when I screwed in the plastic piece, because it’s plastic, and I was using a 12″ Crescent wrench. Only when I tried to screw in the spindle piece of the cartridge on the opposite side and it wouldn’t engage did I realize what I had done. Thankfully I was able to back the plastic bit out, destroying it but not the frame’s threads in the process.

[Lt. Dan]

last night after work… In the garage about 11:30, and I’m converting my wheels/tires to tubeless. For the life of me I can’t get the tires to stop sweating through the sidewalls… Gave up and went to bed. This morning I checked again- still leaking… Pick up one of the empty bottles of Stans, and realized that the weight felt funny… I forgot to shake the bottles! All the good stuff was still settled on the bottom, basically I just put water in my wheels last night.

don’t wrench tired….

[Author]

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