Any ideas, ive got a ticking sound that occurs once every revolution of the crank, only seems to be under load as I can’t replicate it with the bike stationary, im guessing it must be a pedal bearing or bb or crank bolt, aside from checking everythings tight, is it sensible to replace the bb, it’s a sealed square taper type, or do a pedal service first,or maybe just remove peldals, cranks and bb, regrease and reassemble? I guess a regrease would be logical but if I remove it all and reassemble and the problems still there, ill be none the wiser.

Thoughts? Cheers.

Cable hitting the tyre?

I’ve not specifically checked actually, but ine of the clips on the top tube rear brake cable is missing, I’ll check the cables out bit I’ve got a feeling its not that, that would be too easy!

Do you have a front mech? if so could it be end of cable hitting the crank. I had this for a while and took me a while to figure it out.

easy enough job to swap the pedals with a mates and that’s one thing off the list. More often than not it is the bottom bracket.

Easy to eliminate some areas by removing various items like posts or bypassing rear mechs. Swap pedals instead of stripping – that sort of thing saved a lot of time when I had an annoying, almost impossible to locate click.

I was seriously thinking it might be a crack in the frame until I located it – bottle cage bolt holes.

Edit : Slow typing – Jekkyl beat me to it.

My husband came close to dismantling his entire bike before he realised it was the end of a cable just catching his shoe!

I had the metal part on the end of my shoe lace hitting the crank before causing the same sound!

Spoke?

Thanks for the replies all. Don’t think it’s a spoke as gave the bike a good clean at the weekend, I didnt notice any play in any of them…however, I do recall the front mech cable being a little long, so ages ago I folded it back on itself and wedged the end on part of the mech to keep it out of the way, so it may have popped out…deffinatly something to check there!

Re-grease pedal threads.

Cotton wool in ears

Pedals are pretty new, thinking about it, I had the tick before i replaced them I think, however I only put a very thin smear on the pedal threads, I don’t suppose it’ll hurt to take them off and have a look though.

My square taper cranks seem to need regular tightening to avoid creaks.

Free hub bearings can do this too. It’s a pain to diagnose.

Causes that are not always obvious:

1) A loose spoke.
2) The rear axle or QR skewer needs a clean and some lube.
3) The crank bolts need tightening.

Just to add to the list of non-BB/crank options, I once got as far as replacing a BB to get rid of a terrible creak only to find out the culprit was actually was my QR skewers!

My QR squewers could maybe do with a look too, they are just generic ones that came with the bike, and they do look a bit tired..I have greesed them them previously but that’s probably another thing to give an overhaul, along with checking crank bolts lol!

I suppose theres lots of little things like that to check,looks like i’ll be doing a full service at the weekend and then see how things are!

Think I may have solved the mystery..no test ride yet but I managed to put half a turn on each crank bolt, they weren’t hanging off exactly but I hardly struggled to nip them up 😮