Dumb Bike Problems

Had a creak, started simple, removed the cranks and BB and regreased, still there.  Went through each pivot and checked and regreased bearings and pivot bolts.  Still there.  Pulled the fork off, repressed the cups into the frame and the creak was still there.  It is now about 1 am, started at around 8:30pm after dinner with the wife.  Went back to the cranks, tried the pedals, still there!!!  Pulled the cranks out and they are Raceface, checked the chain ring, that was loose, only slightly, tighten it up and creak was gone!!!  Now whenever I get a creak that is the first place I check and that lesson has paid off!!!!

Oh yeah, now fighting with "cable tourism" on my e-bike.  Finally had enough and ordered a wireless dropper.  Fixed that (hopefully)

Back in '98 working on my dad's proflex with HS-22s on it, he got new pads for ceramic crossmax wheels. Went to go put the new pads in after removing the old ones and I'll be damned but they don't fit. Hold them up to the originals and they look the same. We both spent about an hour cussin' and head scratching. Then I rotate the pad 90 degrees and it pops right in. Turned out we were trying to align the pads like "I" instead of "-" ... just didn't occur to us with the wheel out of the frame to make sense of it. 

Definitely done a LOT of stupid bike mechanicing in my life but that one stands out as the silliest. 

Cracked crank bolt - Rotor cranks. Creaked for years, I’m not hugely bothered by creaks around the BB area, it was intermittent l and I had a press fit bb so go figure. Eventually realised the flange on the retaining bolt was starting to shear when my cranks started to loosen and I couldn’t tighten them up properly. The Shimano mech cable routing, chain routing and the little spacer on the back of the cassette are all things that have caught me out!

So much to unpack here. I am guilty AF about not tightening stem hware on my own bikes. Haste is the biggest maker of waste (and near impacts to the face). While I triple check my work on friends' bikes, I rarely glance at my own after the swap. Started leaving one face plate screw OBVIOUSLY loose to counter that oversight. Most of the times at least :D. As for the tiny screw/washer/nut/part/ heading for oblivion through the deck slats, may I recommend a cheap, large area workout mat? That was one of the best purchases I made for my basement shop space.  Bonus, it stops chemicals from staining the floor, which may be more important on a wood deck. It isn't 100% full proof though, since as this thread shows we can all rise to the occasion of becoming a bigger fool.

After a Year chasing a mysterious rattle, few bike shops, a couple rebuilds, i dropped my wheel and heard the noise that was never there while on the brakes, but either up or down never stopped annoying me, the Rivets on the rear Magura MDR-P gave up and the floaring ring was just jumping on the spider

One time, before heading up the lift on one of my first bike park days ever, I lubed my chain with an aerosol spray lube – inadvertently covering my rear rotor. This was at Winter Park, before it was Trestle, and one of the only ways down from the top was straight shot under the lift. I had probably just watched a Cedric Gracia or Fabien Barel NWD segment or something, so I nuked it down, thinking to myself "anyone seeing this from the lift is probably super impressed." When I grabbed brake for the corner at the bottom of the straightaway – nada, nothing. I'm honestly glad my brakes were so bad anyway that I didn't just do a high speed endo/scorpion. I somehow made the corner, and to this day, it's probably the fastest corner I've ever hit.

I had a horrible creak coming from the BB/rear wheel a few years ago that I just could not solve. Pulled and tightened the shock bolts/pivot bolts/cranks/pedals/chainring and cleaned/greased the rear thru axle threads all to no avail. Turns out my hub axle had sheared but the cassette was still solidly on the wheel. One day I took the rear wheel off and layed it down and the cassette just fell off. Replaced the axle in the hub and it went away instantly. 

I’ve had that exact thing happen to me; riding along the PCT up in Downieville area, I heard a nasty scratching/grinding sound…didn’t find the rock until it was too late. A new CSU fixed the problem!

I9? Heard of this happening too many times. 

thats a classic hahaa!

I have had that happen twice now!

Went about the task this past winter of removing the main link on my Norco Range, which meant I had to remove the BB cups. Non drive side came out smooth, drive side wouldn’t budge. Figured a gorilla over torqued it at the factory, so I used more leverage… to the point where I rounded out the 3/8” drive on the tool. Some curse words, head scratching and a new tool later I find out it’s a reverse thread. Oops.

Park tools BB tools etc are trash. They are light and very soft.
Ali and temu have Either the same or better but considerably cheaper.

DT swiss 3 pawl system. I ended up having it happen 2 more times but you can tell by the creaking noise.

I work at a shop owned by two brothers. Years ago, one of them was helping the other get an xc race bike ready, and they put a ball bearing in the bar threw the grips on with bar end caps and handed it back. Other brother tore the bike all the way apart trying to find the noise. 6 hours later he found a ball bearing in the bar.

Specifically a Hydra?

If you add a dab of grease to the bearing the bike will leave the shop silent only to shake loose at the optimal time for max annoyance. Don’t ask me how I know. 

2 mistakes stand out for me, mostly because they were quite painful.

1. Working on an old beater mtb w a seized fork. Took the top cap off and looked down the stantion and see a bunch of rust at the bottom of the coil spring. I try penetrating oil and persuasive strikes to no avail. So I try compressing the fork while the top cap was off... well, thats right when the spring breaks away from the rust, shoots up and hits me in the face and the goes on to break the CFL tube lights in the garage. I pick myself off the floor, stunned and unable to see (bc i killed the light bulb). Thank goodness I was wearing glasses as the spring and gave me the best black eye of my life. If i hadn'  been wearing glassess at the time, I'  probably be wearing a patch and missing depth perception today.

2. Installing new pads and rotors and working on aligning the caliper. Its late, I'm  not paying attention, I stick my finger near the spinning rotor and it catches my middle finger nail and rips it clean off. I've  broken a femur and the pain from ripping that nail off was worse, more acute at least. No wonder its such a popular torture technique. 

We did that to one of the sales guys. One in the bar, one in each bar end (it was the early 90s), and one in the stem. By his 3rd trip back to remove the offending bearings he was very much none too pleased. 

I can empathize!

It’s difficult to explain the full physics without photos, but I was trying to remove a thread on cog from Halo single speed driver without the dedicated tool. I ultimately bent and wedged a cone wrench between the cog and a lip on the driver body. I then proceeded to put the whole she-bang (pun intended) in a bench vice to try and bend the cone wrench free. Needless to say, it did not go as planned. The bent cone wrench snapped releasing all its energy and shot the driver/cog into my face/eye with no protection. Luckily the cog teeth impacted more above my eye. I spent the evening in the ER and thought for a few hours I might need emergency eye surgery to save my vision.

I ended up with a few stitches and trauma to my retina that had to be monitored for 6 months. I had a whole summer where if I looked left quickly I would get a flash of light that would blind vision in my left eye for a split second.

Man, the safety glasses thing hits too close to home.  

I was once (attempting) to rebuild a rev a rockshox reverb in my garage.  I was at the part where you set the IFP depth with the stupid tools, and then equalize everything and add air.  I was struggling with it and couldn't get the stupid thing to take.  I had just burped up mineral oil all over my work bench trying to air it up and was now setting everything up for a second go at the final re-assembly.  At any rate, my wife comes out into the garage to do something, takes one look at me and says, "Don't you think you should have safety glasses on if you're going to be making a mess of things."  

I obviously grumbled and moaned and told her that I knew what I was doing and to mind her own business.  She went back into the house and while I cursed her under my breath, I begrudgingly found a pair of safety glasses and put them on.  

Literal seconds later, I'm inflating the post, and the inner tube was forcibly ejected out of the stanchion.  I happened to be looking directly down at the post when this happened, trying to get a sight line on the IFP to see what was causing this.  I watched, as the inner tube shot directly towards the center of my eyeball, ricocheted off of my safety glasses and shot up into the rafters of my garage.  

I for sure, would have lost an eye had she not come out to wo-man-splain to me how I was being an idiot and I'd have looked like a pirate for the rest of my life.  Thank god for my wife, and thank god for safety glasses.  I now wear them any time I'm touching suspension, brakes or any time I'm putting real energy into the tools.  

As for the reverb, I did what any self respecting mountain biker did with reverbs during this time period, I put all of the parts straight into the trash and just bought a new one.  

Going way back on this one, I was about 11 or 12 riding bikes with a neighbor when my chain breaks. At this age it blew both of our minds, what do you mean a chain breaks. So we grab the chain, put it in the vice in my parents garage and used punches and a hammer to push the pin out on the snapped link and then put the next workable link in place and do half of it in the vice. We took the other end of the chain and wedged a board behind the chainstay/seat stay and proceeded to pound that pin in with our punches. It was an absolute bitch, but we were eventually victorious and out riding a few days later when a different neighbor asked why the chain looked kind of mangled and after telling him this story he was like why didn't you just use a chain tool? We were like, what the hell is a chain tool,  hadn't heard of that one yet.

Setting the bead on tubeless tires always scares the crap out of me no matter how many times I've done it. Last round of my tubeless paranoia was early on a Sunday morning, normally I use a Bontrager Flash Charger with no issues. This particular Sunday the pump craps out and I want to ride...hmm I'll just use the compressor I thought. Not my best idea. Heard lots of quick pops like normal on my nice new soapy water tire, and just as I was about to remove the air chuck from the valve it happened. One of the loudest bangs I have ever not be ready for. I was on my ass, ears ringing before I knew it. Yep, overinflated, yep, ruined bead. Wheel was good, tire not so much. Wife was yelling, not that I could hear lol. Neighbors coming to check on the chaos. 

So Monday morning, ears still ringing I had to buy another tire, and drop more on another "charger pump" lol. 

this thread is so hilarious and educational that we turned it into an Inside Line. @TEAMROBOT, @Jason_Schroeder and I go over some of the best here, discuss some of our own and have a blast doing it. thanks so much to @seanfisseli for starting this and everyone who contributed. let's keep it going!!

one i've not mention has do to with quill stems. twice when i was a kid, my handlebars fell off. once in a bmx race and once on a 10-speed hauling through a crusty asphalt parking lot. my dad didn't realize that the quill bolt was as important as the fork locking nuts on threaded headsets, so the quill bolts weren't tightened securely. i'm pretty sure these two crashes (bmx was embarassing, 10-speed was painful) led me to want to know more about how bikes works, ha!

also, after recording the podcast, here are two texts from robot and schroeder - robot's image of the backwards demo fork from a decade ago, but he also "just put a tire on backwards", then jason losing a piece of the tire lever in the tire, ha!

Oh, I actually have a great one, but its from the missus so nobody tattle.

The other day taking her to El P for the first time, and using the 1up bike rack with both bikes for the first time (shes rides eeb i have a normal). We get to the trail head and her bike just won't turn on. No idea why. It turned on at the house when we checked the battery. Everything was all good. Just wouldn't turn on. There wasn't a feasible way to climb the dead eeb or for her to fit on my bike or whatever so we called it, whatever drive home we're not far.

Aside from just dead motor needing warranty the only thing I could think of was like that sensor thing (Shimano motor) and wondering if the 1up rack had tripped up the weird magnet thing (brain trying to rationalize with completely illogical thoughts)...

But then I remember an issue she had a while ago where her insta360 camera wasn't working right cuz the app was open on her phone.

Take her phone, disconnect the bike from the app... Ebike turns on.

Can't use the bike while connected to the app, mate  

I'll happily learn that lesson ~20 miles from home than 100+ (it is what it is)