My Carbine has a creak, and it’s driving me nuts. So I throw myself upon the knowledge of the STW massive for help!

Creaky symptoms are:
– pedalling, sat down –> creak
– pedalling, stoop up –> creak
– coasting, down rough stuff –> no creak

The creak sounds like it’s coming from the back end somewhere. Given the above, I think can rule out: seatpost (creaks while stood up), pedals, brakes, front end (would creak while coasting).

From there, then I’ve done the following:
– replaced bottom bracket
– removed and reinstalled chainring on spider (SRAM X01 direct mount cranks)
– removed, greased, reinstalled: cassette, mech hangar, rear axle, headset, rear mech hangar
– removed, cleaned, fibre-grip’d & reinstalled: stem, bars

At this point I’m starting to run out of options! Only things I can think that might still need looking at are maybe the clutch rear mech (SRAM X01 11 speed) and replacing bearings in the suspension linkage. What else could possibly be causing this? Maybe the end cap on the rear axle??

PLEASE HELP AAAAGGGGHH!

I’d be re looking at pedals/their axles. They aren’t spinning when you aren’t pedalling

Shock bush needs a grease?

Linkage seems likely given what you’ve done already. Don’t know how accessible the bearings are on a carbine, if you can get at them to see how they rotate it’s usually obvious when they’re in bad shape. So you don’t need to go knocking the whole lot out straight off, it might be just one bad one.

Thanks for the input so far! Hadn’t thought about pedals not spinning… I’ll try that, it’s easy enough to swap them out for a spare pair so worth a go.

Shock bush should be good – it’s only 6 months old and came with new hardware from TFT – but I’ll double check.

Failing that I might have to check the bearings in the linkage. I don’t know when they were last changed so no harm in swapping the whole lot out, I think it’s only ~£40 or so for a full set. Probably save that option till last though!

I mentioned shock bush as mine seems to need a strip and grease every few months (SC frame), otherwise I get the same creak as you described.