All

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!

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...

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...

X2.

I do this all the time, too.

I recently performed a lowers service on my fork so I took the opportunity to clean and regrease my headset. I'm dropping into the first trail since the service and I immediately hear and feel a loud clunk and my entire front end feels like it gives way. After inspection I realized I installed the lower bearing upside down so the chamfered edge was not seated properly in the headset cup. The force pushed the inner race upwards into the cavity of the headset cup so I'm left on the trail with a nearly exploded bearing wondering what to do...

As a teen riding street I broke a chain on one of our night rides. As one would expect, none of us had tools. Found a brick, 2x4, and a chunk of concrete and bashed it back together as carefully as possible. Held for a month+

You sir, may have won. TBF I caught myself doing this exact thing but after the 3rd whack didn't produce any movement I stopped and took a peek.

Might be the best Stan's creampie story yet.

Great thread. I'll share my own.. Been working in the industry for years now in various roles, this has turned me into my non-bike friends go to person for anything bike related. A friend hit me up to change his pedals for him - not a problem, bring the bike over, I've worked in shops for years, and changed thousands of pedals. My friend comes over, throw his bike in the work stand, swap one pedal, come around to the other, it doesn't thread on, he watched me struggle for 10 minutes or so, I thought to myself, the thread...

Just last week, I started to get a new rattle in the front end of the bike. It sounded pretty bad, like a very loose bolt, after a few minutes I started to worry that it might even be a loose ball bearing wandering around my headset. I eventually stopped riding and discovered my handlebars were acting like a rainstick/maracas... WTF? Turns out I had slid out the previous ride and damaged my grip, I had replaced them when I got home with some silicone ones I had in the garage (supergluing them in the process...). Except during the crash...

Nice thread! So, I started biking in 92 and since pupils don't have cash for workshop repairs, I was thrown into wrenching the same moment I began and never stopped. These days I am totally guilty of wrenchers' cockiness, yeah got it all covered, noone can tell me anything. Last fall I got a Slash gen6, the one with the chain tourism, so to speak, idler pulley and additional pulley at the chain guide. From the start, the drivetrain made a slight churning sound, which disappeared when lubing the chain. Instant jump to conclusion: yeah, must be the complicated chain...

I’ve done some truly dumb shit in my years riding and working on bikes. I like to think I’ve learned something from it. In the early days of tubeless tires and UST I was sent a sample of Slime tubeless sealant to test out. Always a fan of free and still naive enough give most new products a shot I set up my Mavic Crossmax/Hutchinson UST wheel and tire combo with some of the on brand color goop. Everything was great until I left the bike in the back of my Passat wagon one hot afternoon and came out to...

I'll narc an old buddy out. Our team got a hell of a hook up from so many companies back in the race day. Built our bikes up. Show at SnowShoe & make the rounds of the pits thanking all our sponsors for their support. Teammate goes up to FSA & complains that there's something wrong with their headset b/c he's got play. Isn't delivered in an "inquisitive" manner, more of a "WTF" tone. FSA rep/mech takes one look at it, never looks at my teammate & says "It's upside down." Rep turns his back & walks off. Keeps on...

Speaking of tubeless explosions, I once drove five hours to an XC race that started at 7:30 am the next morning in Echo, Oregon (near the middle of nowhere). I needed (read: wanted) to switch tires to something faster rolling for the race, but from 8 until 11 pm the night before the race, for the life of me, I could not get the front tire to seat. This process included driving from gas station to gas station looking for a car tire air compressor that put out enough cubic feet per minute to seat the tire, to no avail...

Here's a great one from back in the day when we were running 10 speed 11-36 cassettes with those tiny Zee short cage derailleurs. When you're running such a short derailleur cage, it's extra important to nail chain length when installing a new chain, because the cage is too short to pick up any extra slack. It was easy to have a loose and dangling chain in the 11 tooth cog, and easy to have too tight of a chain in the 36. So on the morning of a big ride, I replace an old chain in a hurry on...

Not quite the same as above, but I had an Intense SS frame with the bolt on dropouts that used two extra-long chainring bolts to hold them on. Those dropouts would creak worse than anything you can imagine, sounded like the whole rear end were going to implode every hard pedal stroke. I tried everything and finally found if I coated the bolts with powdered graphite I could get 3-4 days before the sound would return. On that same bike I needed to remove one of the lower pivot bolts/axles. It had a small grub screw that helped keep it...

I have forgotten my bike on a ride once. I feel your pain and shame.

Maybe they should design a mass damper that doubles as a tracker.

😆😆😆 I don't know if I'd have quit the sport, but I sure would have invented a new one - garage door hole punching using high-velocity Pedros levers.