Embarrassing Build Mistakes of the Mechanical Kind

[Chopper the ex Copper]

I once built an Activator. Awful mistake.

 

[gtRTSdh]

Spent a long time with a big bar trying to get a BB out the wrong way.

 

[jimo746]

I once built an Activator. Awful mistake.

We have a winner!

I don't think anyone can top that...

 

[AR-CoolC]

In my youth I decided I preferred the radial spoked front wheels as opposed to the "normal" way.

So after stripping the wheel down and building it up with THE SAME spokes, but of course they are too long to have them radial, so being a young naive pup I had them running in opposing directions on opposite sides of the hub (if that makes sense) so they would fit.

First ride out to show off my prowess as the worlds best wheel builder.....CRACK.....the hub had split around the middle due to opposing forces of the spoke :facepalm:

To be fair I was only about 13/14 at the time.

 

[Kona-853]

Set up a Front mech on a biopace chainset, not realising I had positioned it when it was at the lowest point of the biopace :facepalm:

 

[gtRTSdh]

We've all had bad days

Oh dear!
Well what a morning, torrential rain and stupid me.

So now I have some anti seize and a (hopefully) the right BB, figured I';d do that this morning.
After the trails and tribulations of the BB I was relieved to find the BB not siezed (ha) or stuck... it came out easy...for about 3 turns then stuck fast.
Even all my might on the super long wrench wasn't budging it... I freaked out thinking oh no i've broken it, its ruined, gunna have to sell it or hang it on the wall or something...
Until I relaised in my efforts to be super cool and smart and save some time and effort (always a bad thing), if you want to change the BB, you need to take off BOTH crank arms, no matter how much it seems you don't...
Ugh

I was going to cut the steerer and install the star nut in the new forks myself...now I think maybe I won't do that...

 

[Raging_Bulls]

Okay, you're going to laugh now ...

When I started to build my old Sbike 728, I started by putting the headset cups into the frame and then inserted the fork and stem. Then I put the wheels on so I could visualize the rolling chassis.
The front one went fine, but when I wanted to insert the rear one I noticed that the dropouts were above the chaintstay instead of below it. Turns out I had put the frame upside-down in my workstand. :facepalm:

So forks out, cups out, turn frame around and do it all again, properly this time

 

[coomber]

Some brilliant ones so far

 

[wookiee]

This feels a bit like therapy!

 

[Kona-853]

Completely rebuilding and regreasing my dads headset, only to find that the problem was the front quick release was loose :facepalm: