Thanks boys.

Regarding the tightening of the crank - it's late at night here and I'm consuming a fair amount of theraputic vino rouge (which possibly explains the original post somewhat) - I haven't test ridden her yet, that'll happen in about ten hours time.

With regards to the face plate and bolts, I'll look at that. I've suspected I've heard a funny noise when moving off a few times now. While I've been inclined to blame the headstem, and checked the thing to no effect, it could indeed be some sort of movement in that area. If the crank tightening doesn't fix it, that'll be my next attempt. I have recently installed a new neck. I'm pretty sure I greased the bolts but probably didn't put anything around the bars. I'll give it a go.

Cranky? (you aren't my lost twin are you?) When the above two fail, I'll follow your advice. My problem is that I've never seen Tri-flow here - can you describe what it is so I can find some sort of alternative?

But yeah, it's looking like a long, slow, rebuild and relube of everything. I built this bike up about 12 months ago, did 600 quick kms and then left her on the wall while I struggled with bents and Trek's and returning to uni and life and boring stuff like that. I've rattled up a lot of kms in a surprisingly short time over the last few weeks but it's possible that something has just dried out during her time out.

I really want to love this bike. It's got so much going for it but somewhere, some how, we're just not clicking ... er hang, she's clicking and I'm grumping.

Richard