Friday, December 28, 2012

Creaks, squeeks and noises

I finally fixed the creaks on my Giant. Turns out it was a combination chain, bottom bracket, fork and pedals. First I tried cleaning the chain and lubing it. That reduced the noise, but I still had other noises. Next I cleaned the bottom bracket and noticed one bearing wasn't turning properly. I had Barney's replace the bearing, which made it much better.



After I got the bike back from barney's the noise was much better. After a two weeks, I felt compelled to get rid of the noise. I started by cleaning the seat post and fork. Since I sweat alot, the seatpost and seat tube had lots of salt. I gave it a thorough cleaning and applied a little bit of lube to seat tube. The fork took a bit more work. First I removed the handlebar, then I removed the fork from the frame. The top wasn't too dirty, but the bottom was full of black oily gunk. I didn't think dirt, sand and grit could get in there, but looks like the wet conditions on Major Taylor Century got lots of dirt in there.

I rode the bike for another weak, but there was still a little creaking noise on every revolution of the crank. Finally, I decided to take the pedals off, give them a thorough scrub and lube. I wouldn't have though it would cause it.

Now that I finally figured out what caused it, it should be easier to diagnose in the future. The noise from the chain tends to be higher pitched squeek. The pedals tend to have a low frequency creak just after the apex of the crank revolution.

The fork creak tends to happen when I'm out of the saddle. The saddle creak on climbs with low cadence.

No comments:

Post a Comment