The most common cause of unwanted noises while you ride your bike comes while you pedal,
meaning that in all likelihood it comes from the drivetrain down here. We'll start with
the easy bits first, but remember that any time you do anything to the bike, go and ride
it afterwards to see whether or not that was in fact the cause of your noises. Let's start
with the pedals.
Remove your pedals and then clean really thoroughly the axle of the pedal and also the threads
inside the crank. Then re-grease it and tighten it down to the right torque. Technically this
doesn't actually have anything to do with your drivetrain, but creaking cleats on clipless
pedals can actually be really common. Give it a try, just squirt it with an aerosol lube.
You wouldn't have thought that works but actually it kind of does. However, if that doesn't
sort your creaking cleats out then take the bolts out, clean and re-grease these as well.
Then we put a medium-strength Loctite on them when doing them back up again.
Next easy bit on your drivetrain is your chainring bolts down here, they can often be quite noisy.
Just start off with making sure they're all tight. SRAM actually don't specify a torque
setting on here, but Shimano say 12-15nm, so that's pretty darn tight.
It should be that the friction of the bolt at the back is enough to mean that you can
just tighten it with an allen key, but if not, just try putting a finger there to start
with. Otherwise, with Shimano you need a specific tool, and with SRAM it's just another allen key.
If you then take your bike for a ride and it's still not silenced your creaks, then
it's time to be a bit more thorough. Remove each chainring bolt individually, then re-grease
both the actual thread of the bolt and also the contact points there. If that doesn't
work either, then you need to be super thorough and actually remove the chainrings and grease
the contact points where the chainrings themselves bolt onto the spider.
If that hasn't sorted your problem out either, then let's turn our attention towards the
back of the bike and the rear derailleur hanger, which is often a problem area. Just pop your back wheel out.
Take the rear derailleur off and we need to take the actual mech hanger off as well. Give
all the contact surfaces a thorough clean and grease and also grease the bolts as well.
Then torque it down to the correct torque. You shouldn't really ever have to grease your
rear derailleur hanger, that does seem a little bit extreme, but let's face it, if you're
plagued with a noise that you can't track down, then you've got to do everything you
can, and this is one place we have heard it said, can creak.
You could put a dab of Loctite on these little bolts here that attach to the derailleur,
but I'm in two minds to be honest, because here we've got a 2.5mm allen key bolt and
they're notoriously easy to strip, so even though it's been bolted on to the derailleur
hanger and not the frame itself. It's quite a delicate thing so I'm just going to use
grease. While your back wheel is out, it's a good idea to possibly put a dab of oil on
the dropouts as well, a thick wet lube. Although it's pretty rare, the actual dropouts themselves
and the interface with the quick release can actually make a creak, so again, if you're
desperate, just give that a go. And don't neglect the quick releases too. Often when
you've got an external camm on there, it benefits from a bit of grease and also the axle of
the quick release as well.
If that still hasn't worked, it's time to take a deep breath - we're going to tackle
the cranks and the bottom bracket. Depending on the age of your bike, this could be more
or less straightforward. Older, threaded bottom brackets for example are more straightforward,
but then they creak less so you're less likely to have to deal with them. There are so many
different types of cranks and bottom brackets that it's impossible to cover each one specifically,
but there are a load of general rules you should apply no matter what your manufacturer
or bottom bracket standard. First things first, you need to grease the cranks where they meet
the axle - just a thin layer, that really helps to alleviate clicks and creaks. Then
in terms of your bottom bracket - as I mentioned, threaded bottom brackets are much, much more
simple. You grease the thread where it goes into the frame and you obviously also grease
the bearings as well.
Push fit bottom brackets are slightly more complicated. They work by having plastic cups
pushed into the frame and then bearings pushed into the press fit cups. As you can see, there's
two possible places there for any kind of creaking or clicking. Generally speaking,
you need to grease the bearings where they go into the cups, but the cups go into the
frame dry. Up to a point however, some manufacturers have recommended that you use a retaining
compound, like Loctite or threadlock to effectively glue the cups into the frame to prevent any
kind of movement at all. You do need to be super careful if you're going to do that,
you might in fact void the manufacturer's warrantee, so check with them before you do
anything extreme like that.
You can see on here, that's where the two cranks attach and that's got a layer of old
grease on there, so we need to refresh that.
While you're just cleaning and re-greasing everything, just run your finger and move
the bearing there. If there's any kind of grittiness or notchy-ness, then you'll probably
need to replace the bearings and for something like this it needs some very specific tools,
so you just need to take it to your bike shop and get them to pop some new bearings in.
Once it's clean, re-grease everything inside, including the surface of the bearing where
it meets the crank.
Re-grease the axle.
Fingers crossed - by now you've sorted out your creak or your click. But to recap,
we re-greased the pedal axles, we checked the chainring bolts for tightness and then
if necessary we cleaned and re-greased them. Then we cleaned and re-greased the mech hanger
back here and we also had a quick look at the quick release as well. Finally, we turned
our attention to the crank bolts and also the bottom bracket as well.