My rear wheel Archetype on Miche Primato) creaks a lot when leaning side to side whether pedaling or not. I’ve tried putting a bit of oil on the spoke nipples and at the flange which improves it but doesn’t fix it. There is a fair bit of flex in the wheel and it rubs the brake blocks quite a lot when pedaling out of the saddle. Does it just need seeing to by a wheel builder on is there a simple diy fix? Cheers.

It may be the spokes rubbing against one another where they cross.

£5 including postage?

[this is/was in the For Sale forum]

oops

I tried putting a bit of oil where the spokes cross too and it hasn’t done much unfortunately.

From the limited information given, I’d suspect lack of spoke tension.

If the wheel rubs when making an effort it needs tensioning.

Have a go at it yourself, making sure to keep the rim central to the axle by making a simple dishing gauge out of a length of batten with three screws though it. After all that oil the nipples should tighten nicely.

I have the same wheel build and they do not flex under my 95kg of muscle. They need to be tensioned correctly

Thanks for the advice. Sounds like I need to get tweaking.

Have had a go at tightening everything up. It all seems to have ended up true but we’ll see tomorrow in the ride to work. The one thing I want sure of was how tight it was safe to go?

Sorry, but you need the late, great Sheldon for that:

(or buy a tension gauge, I guess – I just go for Real Damn Tight)

(maybe after checking that the rim has no cracks and the nipples are brass ones ! – or just do ’em up a bit (quarter turn each) & see if it helps)

Sorry, but this is one of the best topic titles recently… 😆

Thanks. A lot of thought went into describing the problem in just the right attention grabbing manner.

The ride to work proved relatively successful the creaking is improved and the brake rub is almost completely eliminated too. Just a bit more tightening all round should do the trick hopefully.