Quick poll: stupidest maintenance mistake?

My CB400 superdream caf racer single seat conversion.
Lovely rat of a bike finished in matt olive drab.
Finished putting it together to take it out on a test ride.
Gave it a handful on a local section of quick twistys and the whole single
seat unit slid backwards due to lack of bolts holding it on.
This in itself wouldn't have been so bad, but the 2nd hand fork clip ons
wern't that well secured and the left hand one slipped on the fork leg
stopping me pitching the bike into a left hander.
Exit bike stage right into a old style cast iron metal fence closely
followed by moi.
Broken wrist and a trashed superdream.
I was young then.

 

2 from my spannering days.

Left the keys in a car I was servicing on the ramp. Came back after
lunch, ready to put in the fresh oil, and discovering the car had
already left with the owner.

Serviced a mini, as the owner was taking it on holiday around
Scotland. 3 days later, an irate, shouty owner rang from the wilds of
Scotland, after his points cam had worn down so the CB points wouldn't
open.

I'd forgotten to grease the distributor cam after changing the
points ..

Paul.

 

<wavylines... when i were a lad>
Strange tinny rattle in Morris Minor when braking.
Found one wheelnut running around in the hubcap.
The others were all nice and tight so no harm done.

 

What, again? Have you forgotten the OMF# thread?

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

Couple of good ones:

Did the 'forget to tighten the wheel nuts' on my Giulietta NSF wheel once.

Also on the Giulietta, was working under the bonnet on some electrics
[1]. All fixed, went for a spin. All seemed good, until I wanted to go a
bit faster. Throttle very stiff, so I *pushed*. Where upon it opened
fully. Fine. Until I took my foot off and it stayed open....

Clutch down, out of gear, coasted off the road with the engine
screaming. Shut down, opened bonnet.

Roll of insulating tape that I'd left under there had jammed the
throttle linkages.

That was exciting, I can tell you.

[1] Insert wisecrack here.....

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 145 2.0 Cloverleaf 156 V6 2.5 S2
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Using wet and dry paper to clean the crankcase mounting surfaces of my
AJS 31 CSR after trying to stop an oil leak from the cylinder bases with
new technology gasket sealant - 'plastic gasket' IIRC. Cured the oil
leak but little bits of abrasive had got in to the oilways. Blocked
supply to centre main bearing followed by rapid big end failure.

--
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Fisher at Home: |
| Voxan Roadster Gilera Nordwest * 2 Yamaha WR250Z |
| Gilera GFR * 2 Moto Morini 2C/375 Morini 350 "Forgotten Error" |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

 

Ah, someone else is on the ball, at least.

I'll resubmit this then:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.rec.motorcycles/msg/0b88e55dfef801ad

 

Which led me on to Pip's eighteen page reminisce.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk...read/thread/b12050356094c724/7a95f24ebd0853dc

Well worth another outing. I particularly liked the hex bar in the
lathe and the flying propellor ... :-0

In terms of quickening yourself off the mortal coil, it's up there
with my slipping a metal tape measure between the plug and the wall
socket, when I was about 5, the experiment ending abruptly with a
massive bang and scorched wall.

Paul.

 

I have *nearly* done that a few times.

 

Oops. Yes.

Perhaps it's time for another DIAABTCOD thread.

 

I've done both of those. No damage done in either instance, although
the handling did get interesting on the over-run going over the Great
Dividing Range from Armidale to the coast in the first one (on a T500R).
On the throttle the axle was pulled back into line; off throttle it
wandered backwards somewhere.

I did mangle the chain adjuster on the GSX600F by only using the
toolkit spanner to tighten up the rear axle. The chain adjuster couldn't
take the force of my RG-style "rev it up beyond the torque peak and dump the
clutch" racing starts...

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

Delightful.
Bit like his submission re his time in Devon with the
Environmental Health Dept. (Sorry, I have no link to this.)

Are there anymore of these gems around?


--
Jeweller
R100RT
Formerly: James Captain, A10, C15, B25, Dnepr M16 solo,
R80/7, R100RT (green!)
www.davidhowardjeweller.co.uk

 

The oil pressure switch blew out [1] on the 748, so I got
a replacement the day before a trackday I had booked months
in advance. Couldn't get a socket on it so had to use a
large adjustable spanner. Took the old one out and put
the new one in, starting it off by hand to ensure that
I didn't cross-thread it. Tightened it up with said large
adjustable and wanted to make sure it was tight and
then it went "tink" and fell off. It had sheared below
the nut of the sensor, leaving the body in the threaded
hole and flush to the outside too.

Luckily it wasn't tight so I could spin the threaded
part out. I managed to speak to a dealership friend who
was on the same trackday and he brought me one to the
track.

Narrow escape but probably the worst one.

There was also the time I lost my molegrips and spent
weeks trying to find them, only to spot them still clamped
to the underside of the RGV I'd been riding about on
in the mean time.

[1] they all do that sir.

 

Surely you already did this with the mechanical fuckwittedness thing
(OMF#)?

 

So you're saying it's a *GINGE* ?

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

That is just wonderful.

 

Iirc, the twats at MCN did that and tried to blame the blaster.

Nearly done that on more than one occasion.

Done that a couple of times.

Also; going to change gear and finding no gear lever there. That'll be
the gear lever I meant to tighten up, that will. Got home with a set of
small moleys on the shaft.
Somewhere in a gutter on the road to Worthing, there rests still, a GS
gearlever.

 

Similar thing in my old beetle, but my wheel overtook me going downhill
at around 30mph, just before the car developed an interesting lean.
Luckily all the nuts stayed in the hubcap, all the way down the road to
somebodys garden at the bottom of the hill.

The brake drum left a lovely score mark in the road, I could feel the
pucker in the seat for weeks afterwards and trying to get the jack under
on a hill to put the wheel back on (after I walked down to it) was
entertaining for the spectators.

 

I managed a bit of a cockup with my Beetle once. The FiL had gone into
business[1], some years previously, manufacturing electronic ignitions for
cars. They patched into the leads of the distributor, and the electronics
lived in a large metal box about half the size of a shoebox. I had stripped
the thing off my Cortina before I sold it, and a few months later fitted it
to the Beetle.

Initially, it worked very well, but after a while, there was a sudden
drop-off in power, which I couldn't find the cause of. I ran it around like
this for a couple of months before making a serious effort to diagnose the
problem. I found it quite quickly - the metal box, which was sitting loose
in the engine bay, had knocked off one plug lead. D'oh.

 

Doing the shims on my Z1R for the first time, reassembled and it ran like a
bag of nails, spent ages trying to convince myself I'd not put the cams in
wrong, by pulling every thing apart again.

Eventually tracked down to a spark plug had got "clipped" and had a hairline
crack in it.

--
Steve Parry
BMW R80RS, 03 BMW R1100S Boxercup, 07 K1200GT SE
95 BMW F650, 87 Yamaha FS1, Sukida SK90PY, 91 Kawasaki AR50,

www.gwynfryn.co.uk