Your moto wrenching mess ups.

When washing the bike, I used to put a rag in the air filter boot, before putting on an air filter cover. Just in case some water gets in. One time I forgot to remove that rag, when putting in a fresh air filter. Bike didn't ran like it should for a whole two motos before I realized it.

Damn that's a bad one, especially with how it started. 

Did you ever tell her?

I did that before a 4 hr off-road race on both shock bolts, which caused the linkage to basically seize and froze the rear end. Sand whoops for about 2 hrs with no rear shock on a 98 KX250. Damn that really hurt. 

It's the first thing I say to her everyday. Tends to set the mood. 😆

I've had all of the normal tube pinches, forgetting to remove the rag, forgetting to tighten bolts, etc. 

But the best one is from when I was about 2. I was "helping" my dad prep his bike before a big race. He handed me a screwdriver and I pretended to do what he was doing. According to him, he showed up to the race the next day and his bike was rattling like it was about to die. He and his buddies went through the carb, the clutch, new plug, even pulled the head off to check the piston and nothing. 

Until they went to pull the pipe off and my little screwdriver falls right out. 😄 I think he said he missed all of practice and lost a few points that day to his rival. 

Sorry dad. 

Replaced throttle cable on my 78 Yz250…. Wouldn’t kick start… had some friends push me down the asphalt road to bump start her….I was side saddle, bike roared to life, throttle wide open, bike dragged me down the road for a what seemed forever… spent the next 2 weeks laying in bed with road rash all over  my body…I was wearing shorts & t shirt… both my hands were burned to a crisp, while in shock, I picked the bike up by grabbing the red hot pipe.  I either installed cable wrong or it was too short, back then we had a shop that made replacement cables….lets just say when I work on a carb now, I triple check the throttle valve is bottomed & working properly…. I have many more hard lessons learned…. My older brother, who got me into bikes and is a much better mechanic…used to call me “ Johnny overtighten” due to my stripped & broken bolt history……

Nothing too crazy. Overtightened my oil drain bolt and stripped out the engine case. 

My favorite was installing the transmission wrong after doing my first complete rebuild. Again nothing crazy but I realized on my test ride that I goofed up cause it wouldn’t go into 3rd or above 

When I was a helicopter mechanic, I had an expensive oppsie once. I was changing out the rescue hoist cable on one of our choppers and having a hard time removing this special kind of circlip. I ended up just ripping the little $0.50 piece of hardware out thinking, fug it, I’ll just order another. 

Come to find out the manufacturer doesn’t sell those parts and to fix this $0.50 piece of metal we had to replace the entire $100k rescue hoist. 

@ML512 

come on boss, whats your biggest screw up?

At 8 or 9 yrs old I learned righty tightly lefty loosely when I went righty loosely on my spark plug. Stripped the head and couldn’t ride for a couple weeks, which was pretty much an eternity at the time.

My dad passed away when I was 12 years old so I had a pretty damn steep learning curve. I would hang with him in the garage but was more focused on working on my BMX bikes and skateboards at the time, dad handled dirt bikes. 

Top 3 fuck-ups in that first year alone were:

- Had a nearly new '02 YZ125 (first big bike), thought I was doing the right thing by pulling off the rear of the bike to clean the airbox. Didn't get the air boot seated all the way around the carb, sucked dirt and blew up a few minutes into the next ride.

- Toward the end of a moto, my bike wouldn't move forward anymore. Could put it in gear and let out the clutch, but made a horrible racket and didn't move an inch. Looked down, sprocket teeth completely left the chat. Sprocket was a perfect circle with no teeth, didn't know to check your drivetrain until that day.

- Was fighting through a tire change the night before a trip out of state for a race. Pinched my tube, was onto the only spare I had. Got the tire on, but couldn't get the bead to set. After fighting with it for a while, decide to dismount the tire and try again. Pull off the tire and a huge motion pro tire spoon falls out, which of course had pinched the tube. I left a damn tire iron in the tire lol. 

Some long nights and a hell of a learning curve for my own racing days, but it made me one hell of a wrench at a young age and allowed me to experience a few seasons in Supercross and Outdoors as a race mechanic for a couple teams. 

Did this on a CR250. Broke off so deep I started looking for countershafts and fully expected to split the cases and rebuild the gearbox. Local shop was able to EZ-out it, I’ve never been so relieved.

Minor because I catch it every time but anytime I pull my linkage apart (21 KTM) I ALWAYS put the linkage arm on upside down. I catch it easy enough because its keyed/slotted to hold the bolt in place but it annoys me to no end that I always forget that when putting it back together. 

I also replaced the bearings and seals on the triple clamp and I found out on accident that that seal that goes on the bottom triple clamp (#82) also fits perfectly on the top under the metal cap (#86). I was so confused for a minute when I pulled it apart and noticed I had an extra seal in there from what was showing on the diagram. Rode it like that for an entire summer and never noticed it until I pulled it apart in the fall. 

In 1979, yeah.. I know.. I was wrenching and racing. My Dad was long gone. My new 79 KX80 had a paper air filter surrounded by a foam outer. I was only cleaning the foam and didn't realize I needed to blow out the paper element as well. After finishing 3rd in the B class at an NMA national at Southwick, the bike started running like shit. Would not accelerate. I started tinkering, trying everything in the book except blowing out the filter (I was barely 12 years old) and that led to a blown engine. After writing Kawasaki a letter, they sent me basically a new engine minus the cases and transmission, free of charge (We had a friend's dad assemble it and it lasted 1 practice session). Kawasaki also told me about a program they were going to be starting that offers support to Fast Amateurs. I was so unconfident in the bike I passed on it and went to a Suzuki with zero support. That Kawi program would become Team Green a year or 2 later. 

Bottom line... That was an expensive air filter maintenance mistake on my part. 

Overtightening the shroud bolts to the nuts molded into the gas tank of the 2006 YZ250F. The nut started to spin in the molding of the tank. Was not a fun one to fix.

Replaced a fork seal. Then realized the new fork seal was still in the package. Downed a few too many natty lights I guess.

Checked the oil in my 2010 CRF250 and didn't put the dip stick in and tighten it down for whatever reason. I just placed it in the oil hole. Tried to kick start it but it was hard and wouldn't turn over.. Dip stick in the gears..

Also another time with the 2010 CRF250, I had to split the cases and rebuilt it. But during the rebuild I dropped something into the cylinder and it broke off the little oil squirter that is underneath the piston. Luckily, it didn't go back into the crank. 

Most recent, was restoring a 96 CR80. just hand set the screws of the pick up coil around the fly wheel. forgot and started the bike. coil came off and caused the bike to mis/backfire so bad, the back pressure crushed the reeds and blew a chunk back through the carb and ended up in the airbox.

Hahaha. A tire iron in the tire would've been bad at speed. 

Oh Sandman reminded me of another good one.

Kids, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT use axle grease in an effort to get your throttle tube and cable to work better unless you want to go WFO towards your neighbor's fence on the test ride. 

And not to mention, how many times have you guys started on a "30 minute job" that ended up taking all night? This is probably a big reason why moto podcasts became popular. 

Tightened my sons tripleclamps too tight, forks didnt rebound or re extend at all, flipped over the bars and broke his arm.

Second F-up was a Lorettas Regional at Sunset Ridge Iliinois, I bled his crappy Ktm brakes a lot of times

he holeshotted Ktm's factory kids by 20 yards, was leafing the race and going to murder the field, best race he's ever had in his life, brakes

went dead, he lost time every lap and came back and dropped the bike, said i hate this bike and that was that, I felt terrible, really wouldve changed his path i belive, spilled milk, meant to be i guess, All MY FAULT

This one made me laugh out loud. Been there 

I’ve had plenty of screwups however the most memorable is pinching 3 tubes in a row one night after changing my front tire on my YZ125, I fucking hate changing tires😂

Adding injury to the screw up: I once was spinning my rear wheel by hand to lube the chain and decided to see how hard it is to stop the rear wheel using the disc rotor by hand. (For those interested, it takes A LOT of force!) I was able to grip the rotor quite well, but unable to react quickly enough when my grip did absolutely nothing to slow the rotational inertia of the wheel and the rotor slammed my fingers into the caliper with immense force. I'm surprised I didn't break a finger or two. 

Back in the late eighties I could not start my first real MX bike a 1987 CR80. cleaned air filter, checked and changed the  spark plug, checked to make sure my gas was turned on … kick kick kick kick kick and nothing. I grew up in PHX AZ and it was summer and well over a hundred degrees and I’m 13 years old and getting pissed and tossed a couple tools into the empty lot behind our house … why won’t you effing start?! Dad finally comes out and asks what’s wrong, so i tell him, and he asks is there gas in it ! I blew my top, why would he ask me something so stupid… of course there is look the gas is turned on and everything. He goes in the house and i look in the tank … it was empty and started on first kick after i splashed some gas in the tank 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

To this day when someone’s bike doesn’t start first thing i ask is … is there gas in the tank? 😂

I've stripped 2 oil check bolts trying to be a human torque wrench. "It would be bad if that came out and the oil leaked out, better give a little more" then you feel it get easier......   aaahhhh fuck you fucking idiot😄 

So even if you won you still lost.

I just did one this past weekend. Did a full bleed of the brakes and clutch the night before Sunday's racing, and I forgot to tighten the rear master cylinder cap fully. 3 laps into moto 2 it came off and he lost his rear brake. On a sand track. So it filled the MC with sand, which I had to fully disassemble last night to get every small grain out. 

Funny thing is, he was 2-3 sec a lap faster w/o a rear brake! He learned that he's been relying on it too much and that he can carry FAR more entry speed than he has been. Now we will try to put that into use, even with a working rear brake.

Also done the blue rag in the air box move, and once dropped a wrist pin circlip into the crank. Got lucky with that one - pulled motor out, flipped it upside down, and the circlip fell out. Whew!

I thought I was the only one who had done that with a tire tool. Somehow i managed to do that with a bib!😂

Was at the track helping a friend with new sprockets and chain. I cut the chain short. Luckily we were at Glen Helen so i set a land speed record to Chaparral to buy him a new chain. I don't cut chains for anything but my own bike.

I was selling an 89 RM250. Since I don't sell junk I rebuilt it, added new plastics, chain/sprockets, touched up the paint etc. Well it sold to really cool guy. And ran for a half hour. I forgot to add coolant when I rebuilt it. The guy called back to tell me about it. 

I got a cost deal on a new cylinder etc. and the guy that bought the bike was willing to go half because he didn't check the fluids before he ran it. Looking back now I wish I had offered to just give him his money back. That bike had a Suzuki Country Racing carb, pipe and head mod. It ran like a fully built motor. 

Haha damn, even more impressive with the bib! Glad I'm not the only one...

Whenever I hear a story of a surgeon leaving something in a patient before sewing them up, it always gives me flashbacks to my tire iron incident lol