Originally Posted by
Triplecrank92
Back again. Well, I rode the bike several times with no change and thus decided to tear down the hubs and repack the grease to eliminate this potential cause. The grease used in the hub rebuild by the LBS was very light-weight, gray grease that was being squeezed out between the cone nuts and the dustcaps. I repacked the back wheel with Phil Wood and new bearings. (The front cones were showing slight wear so I'm looking for replacements at the moment.) Same result with the clicking noise. I'm convinced it is the spokes creaking as the flex rolls with the additional forces of torque, turning, etc being applied. While the wheel is true, I'm thinking of taking the wheel and doing a quarter turn or so on each spoke to tighten them evenly to see if this eliminates the noise. Any thoughts? If I'm tightening each spoke the same amount, won't the wheel stay true?
The wheels might stay true, if you turn each nipple exactly the same amount, and they're all at exactly the same tension when you begin. If you introduce a little runout, though, you can resolve it while you have the spoke wrench in hand. It might be a good idea to add a little lube to the nipples, where they penetrate the rim, and the spoke heads, where they penetrate the hubs, too. Wheels are machines, and they have moving parts. Moving parts almost always work better with a little lube.
Do you have any way to check spoke tension, so you don't over tighten the spokes? It might be a good idea to beg, borrow, or steal a spoke tension gauge, just to be sure. Well, maybe not steal.