What's the daftest thing you've ever fitted?

The one component you've hankered after, got hold of, fitted, stood back and thought.... what was I thinking?

The one for me was: Cannondale XYZ bar ends, about 2 foot ling and looked like a pair of moose antlers!

first white onza porc.. tho I didnt pay for it, so I didnt feel too guilty skidding it down the newly tarmac'd steep streets of plymouth

A Midland CB radio to the handlebars....

A rear stop light

I've done no such thing.

(Though looking back...putting V-Brakes on bikes that originally came with Cantilevers)

gotta be the spokies but got used to them and now cant have a bike without them yeah thats right i said spokies gotta love that noise they make

crap parts

Working in a bike shop, as I do, I have built up a huge number of hacks to ride to work and back, and included such niceties as, adjustable angle stem (no no), multi-position handlebars (my god!), various colours of tyres, single speeds, two speeds sometimes worked, often useless!, 29ers, 69ers, strangely enough i am currently riding a 69er single speed rigid geared 38X18 with knobblies on - on the road and its fantastic!

Me.

The Mrs

An Answer A-Tac zero rise 150mm stem was daft. I'm a heavy rider and always was even back when I was racing XC. Never could understand why my sus fork was compressed out to the point of uselessness on the Pipeline at Newnham.

The Ritchey Z-Max WCS 1.7 tyres (red compound) were another disaster. I built up a set of wheels using extremely light 380g Campag Atek rims. The shape of the rim was the worst possible cross-section for rim brakes, with the pads sliding off, however much you adjusted them. I only tried this setup for one event (down in the New Forest). I couldn't ride the bike on anything loose, with the tyre pressures at about 70psi. Attempting to run the bike down the main descent I twisted my ankle and had to go pound up the road to take the sting out of the sprain, only to rejoin a lap down for a bit of practice and twist my ankle in exactly the same way.

I did my research and bought Mavic 230 SBP rims (also 380g but a much better shape) to replace the Ateks and... I still have them pristine and ready to build into an ultimate set of 32 spoke rim brake wheels on my titanium axled M900 XTR hubs.

Worst disaster was to buy a one piece welded titanium Marin bar/quill stem combo and then... cut down the bar. Still got that embarassment kicking around somewhere - idiot.