New bike (Ribble CGR) and it’s creaking.

Removed and regreased pedals, cranks, bb, seat post, rear axle…. And it’s still creaking.

Would like to find the problem myself before having to ship the bike back and wait at least two weeks for them to solve the problem.

They’ve offered to cover upto 40 quid if I take it to a workshop. £40 doesn’t go very far.

Ideas?

chainring bolts

With no clues as to what triggers it; Saddle then bars and stem

I even took the chainrings off and stuck a load of copper paste between the rings and bolts.

Creaking starts when putting power through the pedals. Ride slow, all good. Give it some welly and it starts creaking.

Have you tried removing seatpost, bottle cage bolts (and any other mud guard bolts etc) and a test ride giving it some welly?

If it still creaks you know it’s not any of them.

From my own CGRTi, I’d also look at the bolt through axles (grease them and the inside faces of the dropouts). In my case it was the BB – took 3 goes of removing, cleaning, regreasing, reinserting before it finally stopped; and it seems to do it every year.

Seat post is greased with copper paste.

Rear axle also greased.

headset not mentioned, worth a look?

BB is screw fit I guess?
Carefully inspect the fit between the faces of the BB and the frame shell, is there a gap where you can you slip in a feeler guage (or slip of paper) between the faces, or take out BB and see if there are uneven markings on the contact point. If so the BB shell needs facing.

Saddle rails?

Stem, bar interface?

Shoe/pedal rubbing on each other.

Finally tracked down a creak that sounded like it was from the shock area yesterday.
It was the spacers under the stem, so my advice would be to rule nothing out and try to isolate different components. In my case I could get it to creak by bouncing on the suspension, so ended up supporting under the BB and heavily weighting the fork to find that it still creaked – so no rear suspension related. I realise that in your case there is no suspension to isolate – but you get the idea.

Good luck.

Si

Copper grease the saddle rails, had an annoying creak on a hardtail and traced it back to that. Cured for all time afterwards.

Happens when standing on the pedals.

Could be bars /stem. Changed stem; bars are greased, not the carbon steerer.

Will try and check that.

Smothered the steerer and stem in grease. No difference.

It’s definitely coming from the cranks/bottom bracket.

Clicking /creaking noise only occurs when pedaling.

I guess the only thing left is to face the bb shell and its alignment.

Checked the pedals? Including light lube on the cleats.

edit – Have you had the cassette off?

Nope, but it’s regularly clicking when the drive side crank is at about 1-2 o’clock, so it can’t be the cassette.

IME cassette is worth checking, could be loose lock ring or missing spacer or just dry joint.

Nope, but it’s regularly clicking when the drive side crank is at about 1-2 o’clock, so it can’t be the cassette.

Just as the load from your pedal stroke is increasing! Could definitely be that. It’s a bit odd it doesn’t do it on the non-drive stroke, but I guess if it wasn’t odd, you’d have found it by now.

It might be doing it on the non drive side…. Just at 7-8 o’clock and not 1-2….

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Pour some plain water over the cassette and see if the noise disappears/changes even for just a few revolutions.

Pedal axles/bearings? Easy to swap with some different pedals to check?

+1 For pedals.

I had the same thing recently, a loud clicking on the drive side only once a crank revolution and only under heavy load.
I had checked or replaced pretty much everything.
The pedals move freely by hand and felt fine… then I took the drive side pedal off and stripped it down. The bearings at the outer edge of the pedal had disintegrated.
Swapped back to some old V8’s and it stopped.

Took the bike to a mate’s shop in Saturday.

Thought we found the creaking. There was a noise coming from the headset. Took it apart. Greased contact points and was surprised that there was no crown race on the forks! I’m guessing/hoping that the fork is designed like this.

Went for a 60km spin on Sunday. All good until the last few km when the clicking /creaking returned.

Definitely something up with the cranks/bottom bracket/cranks/pedals…. 😁

Still creaking…..

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Still creaking…..

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