How to stop carbon stem creaks?

A stunning weekend on the racer was slightly marred by the crescendo of creaks and cracks coming from my very new Easton carbon stem.

I've already used carbon assembly compound on any carbon surface (where the stem meets the alu steered and where the stem meets the alu handlebar) and also where the steel inserts meet the carbon. All the bolts are greased also.

Wondering if I could use normal grease on some of the contact points, or if thats damaging to carbon?

Thanks in advance

vaseline or petroleum jelly works well,

I saw one of the Quickstep mechanics using it a couple of years ago asked him and used it on my bike. worked a treat

Sell it on eBay and replace it with a lighter, stiffer, cheaper aluminium one?

Njee20, in retrospect, yes, an aluminium stem would have been a better choice. Thankfully I got this one cheap, and it looks great, so if I can get it to shut the hell up (perhaps using vaseline, thanks Shep) then it won't have been a complete waste of money.

Couldn't quite bring myself to punt it on to someone else. If it creaks this badly for me then it would probably do the same for them, not likely to make me any friends!

Sorry, there really should've been a smiley in there, I didn't mean it to sound quite so snide!

mined creaked loads and i tried greasing it but didnt work. One day i randomly decided to just try swapping the spacers around a bit and that cured it! No sure if one of the spacers wasnt completely flat on its faces or something but it fixed the creaking.

Not to worry, I had drawn the same conclusion about the same point that I decided to stop sprinting on the hoods for fear of the horrible noise it would make.

It was a £140 stem reduced to £60 though, how could I resist? 🙄

Meeee, it did occur that there was no grease/assembly compound between the stem and spacers, will give it a shot.

It was a £140 stem reduced to £60 though

If only there'd been a clue 🙂

Is it one of the early EC90s with the cotter style clamp? IIRC there were 'issues' with those, although I forget the exact nature of said issues!

I suspect you may have found the reason why it had £80 knocked off the price. Thomson road stems are things of beauty though…

Sell the carbon one and buy a thomson.

Yeah, but it was a 2008 Easton from Chainreaction, I didn't hear any alarm bells ringing at the price, just figured it was old stock.

If by cotter you mean the two metal cylinders that slot into the stem body for the faceplate bolts to screw into then yes, thats the one.

Will do some research. Aluminium stem is beckoning though…

Seems the problem was at the steerer clamping end, not the bar clamping end! There was an early batch that were a bit dodgy.

I'd have a play with it first try dif grease, move spacers about etc. Won't cost anything but time.