[Closed] People on creaking, crunching bikes

I know what you mean, and I also know it shouldn't bother me as I'm not riding one if the creakers, but it bloody well sets my teeth on edge
#first world problems

Noise from mine is the Charge Spoon rails creaking. Everything else good right now.......

Some have no idea
Some don't care
Some think it's funny (Seriously. I've met them)

Had a bloke in the shop last week whith a nice bike with the top shock bolt missing. He was still riding it and the rocker had worn 2 slots in the top of his shock......

My Renthal Duo and SDG saddle sound horrendous..

I had an SDG Bel-Air that sounded horrendous, that had to go!
My old Mount Vision (original QUAD link) had a god-awful creak that I couldn't source, until someone told me about the mech hanger moving against the monocoque swing arm. The swing arm was acting as a sound box & amplifiying the noise, a thin bit of rubber sheet and some copper slip grease and all was fine.
Really don't know how people can ride a bike that sounds like somethings damaged..

Brand new Thomson post creaked all day today and tried to spoil my ride....... It didn't but I'm selling it for trying to ! 😛

A creak means something is moving and wearing.

My reverb creaks the tits off me. It's that or the saint pedals it's coming from

I have a lovely road bike, and I prefer it, like all my bikes, to be silent. However it has a bloody stupid press-fit bottom bracket so creaks like hell. I will never buy another frame with a pressfit bb.

Some have no idea

This, mainly.

I have bike OCD (fastidiously maintained, all logos aligned etc) and some peoples bikes make my eyes water. I road ride with a few triathletes ('nuff said) and I'm forever stopping them mid ride and tuning painfully out-of-whack gears etc.

My other half is getting better, I think she decided tuning her ears and listening to her bike is easier than listening to my withering sarcasm during a ride. Especially given as its me that'll fix it.

As many threads will attest some creaks are difficult to trace. I'd stripped, cleaned, lubed and correctly torqued most of my road bike before figuring out it was a slightly loose front Q/R 🙄 😀

My road bike started making some horrible creaking noises, thought it was the pressfit BB30 but a set of replacement bearings proved it wasn't 🙄 narrowed it down to my new Cero AR30 rear wheel & contacted the vendors. They told me it was down to dirt in the freehub , sure enough I cleaned it out and its been super silent ever since.

Hi my name's Tom and I have bike OCD too. I hate it when anything makes unnecessary noises, but especially my bikes.

I've spent a good couple of hours this week trying to stop my Soul creaking. I replaced the BB which got rid of the "Eeerk eeerk eeerk" but that just revealed a "sqrk sqrk sqrk" which I think was a loose spoke. Trued up the wheels and now I have a "click click click" from somewhere else. ****ing ****. 👿

I think I'm just going to have to set it on fire and buy a new bike.

My intense is creaking like a 95 year old arthritic. Mainly on the climbs. Unusually it's not from the back end. The headset needs stripping and regreasing. The forks need servicing too while I'm at it. It's presently in the shed completely coated in crap.

I'll get around to it at some point. Possibly....

My bike was creaking round cannock today. Headset in the frame, I think. Not nice. Happily it wasn't as bad and Mark's BB.

I like a quiet bike as much as anyone, but you've got less performance critical things like pedal bearings. if you're not fussed by some clicking, you can eke out another 10 years from a set of pedals that someone else has binned because they're noisy.

Did a sportive last weekend and it really surprised me how many folk with the carbon steeds, deep dish rims etc ran by with scrunching gears ... I just don't get it.

I took both of these vids. Turn your sound up....

Did a sportive last weekend and it really surprised me how many folk with the carbon steeds, deep dish rims etc ran by with scrunching gears ... I just don't get it.

Money can't buy you mechanical sympathy.

Chuff off ya bunch of anal retentives. Its? pepple like us that make the bike industdy financially viable.........or is it you?

personally? as a professional bike mechanic I cannot stand any of my 3 bikes creaking, clicking or not working properly.

cannot speak for any one else, as its their bike...but my own bikes doing this drives me mad!

My inbred was nice and quiet until a three hour ride in the peaks meant it was squeeling and screeching after about 10 minutes. So if a bike is being used seems totally acceptable that it makes some noise.

Now cleaned and quiet again, for now.

What gets me is the number of bikes at the start of a race that sound terrible. Discs rubbing, creaking, chain skipping, at the start of a 72 km MTB race

I'm currently in the process of trying to track down a bottom bracket area creak when pedalling, it's not as easy as you think sometimes!

Anything other than seat / saddle creak bothers me. If I worried about that it would ruin every ride.

I did a coast to coast with my son a couple of weeks ago and at several points the rear hub was making awful noises. I know the hub is knackered and needs replacing; I know what the noise is and how to fix it; I know there's still a bit of life in it so I'm happy to wait until it breaks completely. The look on the faces of some other riders was quite amusing.

Amen to this. My road is currently annoying the hell out of me as the saddle rails are creaking and I'm buggered if I can fix it. I've also got a similar annoyance front mech noise, tomorrow nights task is to identify it and remove it.

Hangs his head in shame...

My bottom brackets bearings are on the way out an my commute stead is a bit creaky und cruchy...

Road sportives are just lots of people who have been allowed away from the fisher price play station and get bored of travelling in a perfectly good gear on the flat and spend the time you are behind them , crunching, clicking and changing gears continually, to the point you can take no more and over take them. Only to find their twin relative, in front of them doing the same bloody thing!! Some people are totally ****less to riding bikes.

Saint pedals creaking today , have stripped and greased them but its come back......

While on the bike a creak is probably the most annoying noise in the universe, but when I get home and hop off I often forget about it till I go out next time then hear it again after 5 minutes... And so it continues.

+1 for the sportive thing. Have only done one, but there were bikes around me at the start that I wouldn't trust to ride down to the shops judging by the noises they were making.

Was on the wheel of 3 other mtb'ers yesterday, one stopped at the gate and said that his bike was making a noise. Oh how I laughed as it was mine - saddle bag bouncing around, pedals needing new bushings, headset needing regreased I think. 😆

Didn't let on either!

As long as it is safe, fast up and down I'm not that bothered.

road bike = quiet as a mouse
MTB = some of you lot would have a fit

i know what all the creaks are, i just CBA to deal with them immediately

Heard a rotor rubbing on a ride the other day. So relieved when I worked out it wasn't my bike. However, I dropped back as I couldn't ride near it.

I was at Lee Quarry yesterday but don't think that was me. I started the ride with a lovely silent bike, 2.5 hours and a lot of puddles later and it sounded like a bag of cement. If you ride your bike then it gets dirty and rough, it's a mountain bike, it's OK.

Depends where you ride too. And in what weather. The 'mud' around our neck of the woods is like grinding paste, and gets in absolutely everywhere, whatever you do! It is ever-present. Even if its not rained for weeks.

If you were going to get all anal about every grinding, crunching noise, you'd be performing complete strip-downs after every bloody ride. Life's too short, I'm afraid.

Certain things you pick up quickly:

a) Ride a hardatil through the winter. Full sussers are a luxury to be enjoyed for the 3 dry days between the beginning of june and the end of August. Savour them. If you must insist on persevering beyond this, then budget for replacing bearings and pivots. A lot! Oh... and your bike will creak. Constantly.
b) Shimano hubs are an absolute non-starter
c) Budget for replacing the complete drive chain pretty frequently
d) Bottom Brackets come under the list of 'consumables'. Keep a spare in.
e) Brake pads come under the list of 'very very very consumables' - and can last a couple of rides. Buy in bulk from Superstar, and always keep a stock in.
f) If you let things like creaking seats bother you, then you'll spend most of your time teetering precariously on the edges of sanity.

but mainly....

d) An immaculately clean, non-creaking bike is the sign of a diseased mind 😉

....or a road bike.

+1 to binners

It should be quiet when I leave the house, for no less than the 50 yards to the end of the road. After that nature will have its wicked way and it will be noisy.

Enough mud packed around the frame though does a good job of muffling the creaks.

My road bike, commuter and my Patriot all creak at the BB area. It may be bearings (I've tried grease, copper grease, ptfe and threadlock on the roadie bb threads), but I've no desire to shell out lots of money replacing what still appear to be perfectly decent bb bearings on the off chance.

Probably need bb threads chasing.

mintimperial - Member
I've spent a good couple of hours this week trying to stop my Soul creaking. I replaced the BB which got rid of the "Eeerk eeerk eeerk" but that just revealed a "sqrk sqrk sqrk" which I think was a loose spoke. Trued up the wheels and now I have a "click click click" from somewhere else. * *.

I think I'm just going to have to set it on fire and buy a new bike.

😆

Given up on mine.
Something around the seatpost creaks when the rider is seated. Persisted over changed bearings, saddle, seatpost, seatpost clamp, rear shock & bushings and wheels. Now given up and am in the process of building up a new bike. 8)

binners - Member
f) If you let things like creaking seats bother you, then you'll spend most of your time teetering precariously on the edges of sanity.

i have silence OCD

i cannot stand noise on my mtb, i really cant, the only noise i can stand is that of gears making awful noise after a muddy/wet section, which is perfectly normal!

anything else, especially climbing it drives me insane, luckily (and touch wood!) ive had no noise from mine for ages which is great, ive got a tiny sort of creak/click around the headset area very very sporadically which doesnt annoy me as i only hear it when i hit something straight on without lifting the front end, i think its the headset area but could be anything i guess (even cables just hitting)

and also, 9 times out of 10 its probably something not fitted correctly/dry or cracked, so it worries me too

my mate had a god awful noise from his crossmax st wheels, he started off not caring at all, and just went with the flow, but some 6 months on and it started driving him insane, especially as it got worse in the drier summer, it was really really noticeable on climbing to the point where you couldnt hear each other talking....it turned out to just be his crossmax st spokes needed tightening up all along 😆

i would have sold the bike had it been mine and not been able to trace that noise

I don't think any of my bikes are completely silent.

My Inbred is close as I've recently stripped it fully, cleaned every bit of it and re-built it. But, one of the discs rub as the Elixir's on it need a strip and re-build with new pistons and seals. Might just replace them with some Shimano's like I should have done when I bought the Elixirs.
(Oh, it also needs a fork re-build. Been meaning to do that for months but it's not noisy - just doesn't work very well).

The road bike needs some gear cable tinkering, so it's quiet apart from when shifting when it can make a bit of a click-click-click noise that requires a re-shift.

My FSR is in a bit of a state and needs the same treatment as the Inbred has just had. It also needs the fork servicing and the rear shock/brain.....
The dusty conditions at the 24/12 have left the BB a bit creaky.

BUT, sorting the issues mainly comes down to time, priorities and money.
Time; I don't have much spare time for divving around with bikes at the moment so when i do find the time, I am more likely to be riding a noisy bike than stood in the garage servicing it.
Priorities; spending a lot of time on sorting the house/garden at the moment. So again, opportunities for bike related activities generally involve riding the things, rather than taking them to bits.
Money; I don't have a bottomless pit for repairing my bikes, so a bit of noise will have to be tolerated.

Ho hum.....

My road bike rattled for ages couldn't pin it down, until one day I popped my pump in my jersey pocket instead of the frame attachment as I had had multiple punctures, rattling stopped.

Sometimes its the simple things, no longer attach the pump to the frame.

with your headphones in you cant hear the creaking.

i think all mine creak to some extent.

I do almost all my own bike maintenance, and get obsessed with creaks, but despite constant fettling there's always something creaking. I fix it and it sounds fine then next ride something else starts. It's just constant.

Though in the main seats are the greatest cause.

And if not creaking it's chain rattle. Lately, despite clutch mechs and narrow wide chainrings, my chains are rattling a lot more, and I think it may be down to my switching to Squirt lube, as that results in a dry surface with the wax on the chain which I find clatters against the teeth of the chainring. An oiled chain, while attracting crud also makes it quieter in terms of rattle (though grinds when muddy).

I can't bloody stand noisy bikes. If I'm out riding and a creak rears it's ugly head I'll try and find out what it is, if I can't find it/shut it up I'll leave it until I get home, if I can silence it I will.

I have been known to dump bikes in rivers/streams to get the grinding paste/mud off them, not bothered about water ingress as that normally dries up or on next stripdown gets cleaned out.

I'm not bothered about dry chains though, can't help that, I take it as a good sign that I'm riding out and the bikes starting to complain I'm spending too much time on it and should take a rest.. 😆

Rattling DMR pedals, squeaky BB and a slightly bent derailleur with a rub.

Stops the silence! Know they all need fixing and have new parts waiting! But just wanna ride not spend time fixing till it's definitely needed!!

Some people are athletes first and cyclists second. Lad in our chaingang has been a pro all his life, obv used to having his bikes spannered by someone else, rides with a dry chain, indexing out, creaking bb and doesn't have a pump when he flats... which winds everyone up but seemingly not him!

[url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/bestest-non-creaky-carbon-paste ]I am looking for the solution too !!![/url]

for the guys who have a saddle that is creaking, try putting some oil between the rails and the holes they go in on the saddle, has cured two of my saddles for a while, then just squirt some more oil, has now stopped my flite saddle from creaking for over two months.

Also, Niner EBB's have been known to emit a mild "creak" once in a while 😆
My One9 has the EBB1 (the one screw to tighten it) started to creak from day one, many attempts at fixing it later and plumbers pipe grip (B&Q special) smeared around both faces of the BB and inside the shell and tightened up and all's well. But I have to counter that by stating I upgraded it to the EBB2 (two screw fixing) and a slight smear of paste and that's been fine for at least 18mths.

Mine are often noisy, I just don't mistake that for a problem... I've known people to obsess about squeaks but be oblivious to loose headsets, seized bearings etc.

Though I've got to admit, the DING noise my hemlock now makes when landing drops, as the gear cable pings off the toptube, is irritating. Paint used to damp it I guess, the ano doesn't.

Just watched the Ironman Wales for an hour and some of the creaking, graunching bikes that went past was astounding

I sat 3 parts of the way up the Tumble on Tuesday watching the ToB. The creaking and grinding of poorly maintained bikes being winched up at zero mph by fat knackers was horrible. Constant. Don't people lube chains, tighten BB's and index gears?
Shouldn't have been hard to keep things running quietly with all the lard that was dripping off their faces. Good thing there is a cattle grid with a sump half way up to catch it all. 😆

Sounds like my creaking SDG Bel Air 2.0 is not that unusual then, although it does bother me as the rest of the bike is pretty much silent!

http://www.vitalmtb.com/videos/features/RAW-Friday-Fort-William,26029/Steel-City-Media,14510

Noisey/creaking bikes do my head in!
Pretty easy to make a bike silent(ish), velcro on the seatstay, chainstays, chain device top guide. If only I could silent the Hope Pro2!
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