The Confessional: Your mechanical f*** ups

[Ben]

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Come one, come all. It's time to confess your sins of the spanner to Father Terry. All possibly could be forgiven if Terry's in a good mood.

I could fill a whole thread with my mechanical misdemeanours - but I'll start with this one:

Father, more than 15 years ago I owned a Honda Hornet 600 and lovely it was too.

However, there was a slight leak in the (skimmed) head causing coolant to evaporate and the system to get pressurised. It had been going on for a while but regular top-ups kept the issue at bay.

One day I was riding along, nervously watching the temperature needle rising to a zone only previously seen by the Chernobyl reactor's thermostat, past that and into unknown territory, with no signs of slowing up. I pulled into a petrol station to let it cool down a bit. Luckily I had a bottle of water in my tank bag for just such an occasion which I used to top up the rad. I twisted the radiator cap a half turn and WOOOOSH, the cap popped off and half of the boiling contents of the coolant system rushed out in a powerful greeny-blue column - like the Old Faithful geyser - missing my face by inches.

Hot coolant slapped down on the tarmac and I stood back, staring wide-eyed at a steaming Hornet, feeling very fortunate I hadn't just poached my own eyeballs.

Suffice to say, that's one mechanical f*** up I've not repeated.

[mangocrazy]

I too have many and varied sins I could confess to, but I'll start with what was the first (of many).

My first bike was a Honda C200 - a 90cc OHV single in a pressed steel spine frame - James May has one. It's not the step-thru, it's a proper motorbike with the petrol tank in its rightful place, between your knees. I bought this as a non-runner for the princely sum of £9, when I spied it in someone's front garden with the piston and con-rod poking out of the crankcase mouth.

I knew the square root of fuck all about motorcycle mechanics and had to learn on the job - Dad had agreed to this purchase on the basis that he wasn't going to pay for anything and he wasn't doing the spanner work. A smart move on his part as it turned out.

One of the things I wanted to change about the C200 was the handlebars. They were very sit up and beg (commuter stylee) and even then as a spotty 16 year old I was into sports bikes. It dawned on me that if I rotated the bars through about 180 degrees they would magically become dropped bars...! Without further thought I slackened off the 4 bolts on the bar clamps and rotated them forwards. At about 90 degrees I encountered strong resistance. So I simply pushed harder and harder until that resistance was overcome, accompanied by a sort of slicing, tearing sound...

You can probably guess where this is heading... The control wiring for the headlight, horn and indicator were all routed inside the handlebars on the C200, emerging from a hole under the bars in the centre, where they fed into the back of the headlight unit. What I had done was effectively guillotine all the control wires at that point. A lengthy session of retrieving the wires, soldering the severed halves back together and covering with leccy tape ensued.

Moral of the story - if you feel resistance where there shouldn't be any, stop, inspect and have a word with yourself. You're doing it wrong.

[BikerGran]

This one's not actually mechanical but it was what popped into my head so......

When I first bought my old Kwak GT550 it wasn't running very well and a friend told me there were probably holes in the carb diaphragms. I checked and sure enough it was a miracle it was running at all, long rips in all four. I'd not done anything with carbs before so I was quite pleased with myself after finding a source that would fit new ones to the internal assembly without costing an arm and a leg, replacing them in the carbs and balancing same myself, and the bike fired up and behaved beautifully on a short test ride.
But as I rode up the hill before getting home she spluttered briefly and died! Woe is me, had to push it up the hill and round the corner, coasted down our road, shoved it in the garage and went indoors to sulk.

In the middle of the night I woke up and realised that although I'd re-attached the fuel pipe, I hadn't done the same for the pipe to the vacuum fuel tap!

The moral I found was to double check everything before deciding the job was finished! Came in useful over the years.

[Ben]

I'm quite amazed there aren't more bodging tales out there!

[mangocrazy]

Oh, I'm sure there are...

[fatboy]

I'm rather pleased there aren't too many budget job horror stories!
Here is a tale of owner stupidity for you from many years ago.....
A friend of mine worked in a garage called Auto Tuning, they covered most aspects of tuning.
A young lad turned up on a Yamaha RD200 and asked if they could polish and port it .
No problem, be done by Saturday morning and the owner walked away wit a big smile.
Owner returns to collect the bike, the header pipes (held in place by springs)were left off so the owner could see the polishing and porting work, he was thrilled the big shiney ports, paid his bill and everyone walked off to have lunch, seconds later there was a howl of agony.....
The kid sat on his bike, put his fingers in the worst port and kicked it over....fingers severed

[yello]

I started biking on 2 strokes and got used to dismantling and cleaning them, piece of the proverbial. Then I bought my first 4 stroke, a GS400. How hard can it be, I thought, to replace a head gasket? Answer: beyond my capabilities and tool kit. Ended up loading the bike into my dad's van and taking it to the bike shop. A valuable lesson.

[mangocrazy]

This isn't so much a case of bodging, as of not thinking about the consequences of actions...

In the very early 90s I was going out with a 'vertically-challenged' young lady. So I decided to build a 'project bike' that would have a low seat height and be light. I decided on a 350 YPVS motor and the frame would be hand-built by Hejira racing. The frame was chunky box-section steel and used one of the main frame spars as an oil tank for the Yamaha Autolube system. Way cool... The girlfriend decided she wanted the bike to be 'not girly' pink (is there such a thing?) but left the final choice up to me. Great.

I decided on a fluorescent 'hot pink' frame (I know - but it was the '90s...), sourced the powder for coating and took it to a local powder coater to do the work. The result was horrific - blotchy, inconsistent and big variations in powder depth and colour. In the end I decided to get the frame blasted and re-coated in gloss black.

The gf and I had split before the bike was finished, but I kept it and rode it myself. It wasn't long before I realised the engine was down on power and running like a dog. So I pulled it apart and found loads of nasty gouges on the barrels and pistons. I had it rebored and fitted new pistons, but before much longer the bike was once again down on power and running like a dog. Another stripdown and more gouges on barrels and pistons.

You can probably tell where this is going...

All of a sudden I had a 'light bulb going on in my head' moment and thought back to when I had the frame blasted... I undid the drain plug in the frame spar and drained the oil. As I feared, the oil was contaminated with steel shot blast residue. I'd basically been running the bike on a combination of high quality two-stroke oil and valve grinding paste...

I knew I should have used pre-mix...

[Gio]

Mines not mechanical or electrical, bar the t piece for the vaccuum. It was fitting a scotoiler, whole job went so well I decided it needed a celebratory ride out, got to the end of the drive and couldn't stop, so use the kill switch and rub the front tyre along the kerb, got stopped after 30-40 yards, side stand down get off to look at the bike, the rear tyre was covered in oil, I'd left the oiler on choke (well thats what I call it) so half a pint of the oil covered the rear end.