[Closed] Diagnosing a Creak

This may not work for you but did for me with my Anthem to discover what caused the creak.

Take a ride and find exactly how to provoke the creak then spray a little water on each potential culprit. I found just the tiniest amount on the upper shock mount shut mine up for 10 minutes, one new bushing later and all was good again.

With my bikes the culprit is almost always the seatpost or saddle rails, doesn't matter where it sounds like it's coming from.

I'd just check the bolts and wipe some grease on that before taking apart anything that required proper work.

Nothing to be doing with creaks other than a slow process of elimination. Start where you think it's coming from and work out from there. It's almost always never where you expect it.

I've got one at the bottom of the garden. Pretty sure it's a streem though. wrong country for a creak.

As everyone else, sounds travel up tubes, have you tried the cranks?

Remove the seatpost and try to replicate.

if that doesn't work, remove the seat tube and try again.

potentials: regrease the mech hanger and round the rear axle, all areas of contact. Replace with different pedals. grease/lube where the cable outers meet the stays.
How used is the bottom bracket?

tighten the rear quick release on the nearest orange 5

My Pikes were replaced under warranty due to what I think was a crown-steerer creak (Fishers never confirmed but just sent a new set of forks). I could not for the life of my replicate the creak with the forks out of the bike or without the front wheel in despite being what I thought was fairly brutal...

Thanks all, plenty for me to go at there.

I'll have another go at all the above tonight and report back.

My Aeris has started doing the same. Really sounds like it's the stem / bars (RF Atlas / next 35mm bars) but could be something else so going to remove and grease various bolts.

Clean & grease/lubricate everything except the frame tubes, grips, tyres/rims, brake calipers and rotors 😀

Will most likely be:

1) Seat post clamp/Seatpost/Saddle rails
2) Maxle/Thru Axel/QR's
3) BB/Cranks
4) Headset/Fork/Fork steerer
5) Pivot bearings/bushes

Cables can make some nasty sounds too!

Just had similar....replaced the crankset and bottom bracket, still creaked.

Quick release out, clean and greased, no more creak! ****ing joy

I've always got creaks going off - strangest one was I was convinced it was my BB a Chris King PF30, it had done a lot of miles so I replaced it with another. Still creaked. So I swapped my XX1 crank - creak gone. It appears the xx1 shaft had worn just enough over time that it allowed a bit of play to creep in. Got it replaced under warranry after two years. All good.

In 9/10 occasion I would've gone for the BB.

I did try the BB the other day, it's only 3 rides old (along with the cranks).

So far, I've not tried rear maxle, pedals, seat clamp or headset/steerer tube.

I cant see it being the cables, they are all pretty free and externally routed.

Had a creak I thought was BB or pedals, nope, also checked front end, headset, forks, axle, etc. In the end a quick nip on the seat clamp bolt last night seems to have sorted it. Still at least now my nearly new nano-x's are well greased with red n tacky.

I had a mystery creak which I thought was the Reba CSU debonding again. I changed the stem and all was quiet.

Have you installed bottomless tokens in the fork? If so, check the torque on the top cap. It's meant to be 24 Nm, which is way more than you'd expect.

Had similar creaks on my bike and this sorted it (big thanks to Matt H @ 18bikes for helping me out).

Stem faceplate over/undertorqued?

I've re torqued the face plate and greased.

I've installed bottomless tokens and removed a number of times. I will double check that.

It only happened shortly after my third outing. My steerer is quite short and the stem only just fits (about 4-5mm gap before the top cap, no spacers).

I'll double check the Hope seat clamp, I can replicate the noise stood on the bike though rather than seated.

I've changed nothing about the bike in the last 3 rides.

I thought it would be a good idea to Loctite my frame pivot, shock mount and crank bolts. I think this has caused a "click" type noise when I pedal hard uphill. I've cleaned the excess Loctite out of the threads, greased them and will see if that makes a difference.

i had a creak i thought was the bb - changed teh bb still creaked. i cleaned it and it turned out i`d cracked the frame where the seat tube met the BB abut 50% of teh way around the weld. ho hum...

The mother ****ing seatpost clamp!!

First thing I tried when I got home, took it off, re-greased and cleaned, clicking/creaking gone!

Thanks for all the suggestions. So glad I don't have to send my fork back yet 🙂

I haven't read all the other replys. So this might already have been mentioned.
I recently had a similar problem. Sounded like the forks or stem.
It ended up being the main bottom pivot point was loose. The sound was travelling up the down tube to the front end.
Tightened the pivot bolts and problem solved.

Aye my seat post clamp makes some nasty cracking sounds when it's all gritty-n dry, sounds like the bikes ****ed, it's not of course 😆

Spent a while trying to sort one on my five recently. Turned out to be the rear hub as one of the bearings was shot.

I guess a front wheel could/would do the same and you'd not replicate it with the wheel out.

I only found it with any real speed as I was looking for an excuse to replace the rear anyhow but even then I'd removed the bb cleaned and reseated, removed the swing arm checked for cracks, cleaned and regreased the bearings and a few other possibles before I checked the wheel.

Bah, had a ride to work and back on it today. On the way to work it was fine. On the way back creaking started again.

Although it's not as loud and prominent, so this could be something totally different.

Best start working through the list then.

Spray suspected area with gt85, if it goes away you've found the cause. If it hasn't stopped then spray the next suspected area. Rinse and repeat until found. Good luck.

had a persistent annoying one on my Anthem, so stripped and regreased the headset and also removed the Giant dropper and replaced the carbon paste with grease. Creak has gone 🙂 Maybe I should have done the 2 things separately as I don't know which was the source !

tighten the rear quick release on the nearest orange 5

this made me LOL

😆

iainc - Member
had a persistent annoying one on my Anthem, so stripped and regreased the headset and also removed the Giant dropper and replaced the carbon paste with grease. Creak has gone Maybe I should have done the 2 things separately as I don't know which was the source !

Sure I'm staying the obvious but just avoid using grease if you have a carbon frame-it will bond aluminium (seatpost) and carbon relatively quickly. 🙂

Knees?

Thompson Seatpost.... ahem... creakpost.

I went forever trying to isolate a creak and it was the damn seatpost.

just avoid using grease if you have a carbon frame-it will bond aluminium (seatpost) and carbon relatively quickly.

yep, it's an alloy frame and alloy post 🙂

I had an annoying squeak somewhere on my SB66c... I replaced the BB, all the frame bearings, the shock bushes and the headset... everything was cleaned and greased accordingly, the squeak/creak persisted. I loosened and correctly torqued every nut and bolt. I used carbon paste on the seat post (I even went for a ride with no seat post) and the squeak/creak persisted... then I had a fairly big crash... no more squeak/creak 8)

I guess if it drives me mad enough, I'll stack it on purpose at Gisburn on Sunday 🙂

I've got a funny feeling it might be cables rattling against the frame now!

my most recent creak (on my Cannondale FSi) was not a loose crank/bb combo as all signs (power down and noise) suggested to me it was... But a loose rear QR!!!!! Like all on here it never comes from where you most expect..

I feel your pain 🙁 My Process has this reoccurring nightmare . So far LBS has replaced all frame bearings , BB and headset were shot , once everything's been cleaned up / replaced it goes quiet for 3 or 4 rides then starts again . Today I stripped, cleaned and regreased seatpost and saddle ( I knew it wasn't coming from there but... ) Recently had a new chain and replaced jockey wheels , even swapped chain from other bike . Cleaned up rear Maxle , only had time to ride up the road , not confident it's cured though 🙁

I've taken out and greased all the headset / stem bolts, done the same with the seat clamp / bolts, everything else is tight ... and it's still creaking like a right PITA. Pretty sure it's coming from the rear sus linkage somewhere but can't help it's from the forks.

jruk, I suspected the rear linkage on mine. Since I did the seat clamp, it went a lot quieter.

I'll report back after a day at Gisburn tomorrow.

@John - Just been tinkering again and it's def the rear sus creaking. If I hold the top tube strut thing and push down firmly and quickly I get the crack / creak sound. Just hope it's something simple like a pivot bold needing some grease rather than the shock. Will contact Bird and see what they suggest as they've been ace so far (what do we need to say for Ben to pop up on here like the shop keeper? Bird Aeris 3 times perhaps?)

Right,

Day out at Gisburn and I've found another suspect. The rear mech makes a creak that resonates up the frame when I wiggle it from side to side.

This make sense as it's loudest when climbing and pedaling. The oval chainring is moving it all the time too so creaks then.

Mine was the seat rails. Sprayed wd40 into where the rails went into the seat. Sorted. I was getting driven mad checking headset, stem fork etc. I could of sworn it was coming from the front but no it was the ****in seat.

@John - will try the rear mech tmw and see if I can get the creak without pedalling. Trying to remember if it properly creaks just coasting. Don't think it does...

Mine did it a bit when coasting on rough ground as it must have been rattling, but climbing and pedaling was the most obvious.

When I put the bike on its side and moved the mech by hand I could feel it.

Seat tube again. Lubed up rear mech to stop it creaking, then pushed down in the middle of the bike only to get the cracking/creak noise back.

Undid a few bolts and tightened them back up (one was that tight it gave off a spark as it freed up!).

Finally undid the seat post clamp and it quietened down. Took the seat post out and tried without and there was no noise.

Re inserted seat post and it seems to have gone away again now.

Possible that the seat tube is ever so slightly out of spec?