On 9/21/2020 11:35 AM, 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.

Lubricate the cam of your skewer. You can feel that
difference immediately.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971