Jaysus, **** creak!

Its obnoxiously loud, like, people turning and staring loud when I am heading back through town from a ride (e.g. this morning).

I really thought I had it nailed down to the cinch cranks needing nipped up (the big 16mm bolt on both sides, + 8mm puller, + direct mount chainring), which I did last night, but it is exactly the same this morning.

The one thing I didn’t do was check the BB when I had the cranks off. Well, I gave the bearings a quick spin on both sides and they felt fine (Hope 30mm BSA BB), but thats my last course of action: to unscrew the cups, clean and grease the shit out of it.

Have I missed anything off this list of things that I have already done? (but that changes the creak not a jot):
– Ridden with seatpost out of frame (was convinced it was that)
– Rotated Salsa liplock seatpost clamp
– Changed saddle
– Ridden with alternative rear wheel (I thought it was maybe the freewheel, have had this before)
– Cleaned and greased all axles, threads, dropouts etc
– Changed stem and bars
– Checked and lubed headset bearings

Fingers crossed!

If the bike is wet, proper rain wet, does the creak go? If so you have a good way of isolating the cause there with a spray bottle of water.

The last time my bike made a head-turning crunching creaking noise like you describe, it was because the Hope freehub bearing had disintegrated into metallic mush.

Take your cassette off, remove the freehub, and inspect the bearings?

Pedal/crank interface?
Or maybe knacked pedal bearing?

thank you lovely people, appreciate the thoughts!

Poop, thats a very interesting idea, I like it and will keep it for future reference – could be especially handy for suspension pivots etc. Nice.

Trusty – indeed, I have had that before, and I was able to rule this out as an issue this time swapping wheels – same noise

Matty – good ideas, I had not checked that, did a quick pedal swap to rule out issues and noise remained.

In the end, it was very simple, of course – the BB cups, over the last few months of very hard use, had worked themselves a little loose. Quick bit of torquing with with hope BB tool, and…. noise gone!

It was a truly spectacular noise, I guess the BB cups moving a tiny amount in the threads.

I had a similar one – turned out the stubby screws holding my mech hanger to the old-school dropout were a tad loose, meaning that the rear wheel couldn’t tighten up properly. Took a few weeks of head-scratching. Or to put it another way, a complete re-build really does need to be complete if it is to solve the problem.

big bloke + bike with lots of moving parts = creaking.

simple equation Kev …………… ;o)

greyspoke – aye, I thought that might be my issue too – took that off and lubed it up to no avail. At one point I was CONVINCED that was it. bugger!

Ton – hands up, its a fair cop. Snapping spokes seems to be my current forte.

It was interesting that when I searched the forums, a number of your threads came up – hence my twist of the salsa liplock collar!