On Monday, September 21, 2020 at 9:35:16 AM UTC-7, Mark J. wrote:
On 9/21/2020 8:30 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, September 21, 2020 at 7:59:53 AM UTC-7, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 5:43:07 PM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
My commuter was a wreck and abandoned after the plague and shift to work-from-home, so I gave it a pannier rack, a new cassette, chain -- and to address the incessant BB creaking (Cannondale CAADX aluminum with BB30), I first tried the rear wheel, cleaning BB faces, greasing QR, etc. That didn't work. Then I removed and reinstalled the pedals with some Teflon tape. That didn't work. Then I removed the crank, got it all cleaned up and reinstalled it with grease on the axle, bearings and pinch bolts. Nope, still had creaking, so I removed the crank and knocked out the 6806 bearings, which spun like a charm and felt great -- so I wasn't going to toss them. I pressed them back in with some Loctite 609, but they didn't get long to dry because I had to go pick up dinner at the food cart. I was kind of sabotaging my work, and indeed, the creaking didn't go away. Meanwhile, shifting was not perfect even with new chain and cassette, so I changed the inner cable, which improved things. Threw on some bar tape and then decided to revise the headset a bit and raise the stem, so I dropped the fork cleaned the bearing cartridges and greased those and added a thin HS spacer to the existing line-up because I don't think I was getting good compression on the retaining cap -- not enough space between the top of the last spacer and steerer. I adjusted the HS, hit the road, and the bottom bracket creaking had disappeared. The bike is super quiet, even with a Thompson Elite post.

The deal is that I could pedal out of the saddle or put my foot on the crank holding the saddle and bars and produce a nice creaking -- but that was also side-loading the front wheel/forks/HS and probably causing the HS to creak -- but it was an unmistakable BB creak. Again, I think that BB creaking can be a lot of things besides the BB.

-- Jay Beattie.
In one spot in the crank revolution on the Madone when pedaling hard it will "CLICK". I would think that if it were the BB that it would click all of the time at that spot. With your posting I might try cleaning and tightening the headset again.

You may in fact have a bearing issue, but it never hurts to clean and lube the headset. Like Frank said, seat posts are great resonators, too -- but if you're getting clicking out of the saddle, that's unlikely.

IME, the most common cause of clicking and creaking is the rear dropout/axle on a QR bike. The clicks I couldn't solve turned out to be broken metal frames.

-- Jay Beattie.

Thanks for the object lesson.

BTW, how exactly does one treat the rear dropout/axle creak? Just
grease the dropout faces and/or locknut faces? Friend just told me
about a mystery creak he had.

Mark J.

Usually solved with straightening the wheel and tightening the QR. I've used a little grease, but I'm not so sure that is a joint you want to grease. I do grease the QR skewer and cam to the extent possible.

-- Jay Beattie.