ZHVelo

Update
So I think I can update now, after yesterday's ride and also today where I tested for half an hour without re-lubing, raising the pulley solved this for me. If you pay attention you can still hear something, however, I would describe this as "you can hear you have a drivetrain". Not a noise per se, certainly not bothersome or unacceptable. And in some gears you don't even hear that anymore.

Firstly, there are many threads about it ranging back years, a lot of things that work for some people (older top pulley with shallower teeth, 12s chain that is supposedly narrower seem like two that are fairly simple to try), however, I want to describe the current situation and see if anyone here has thoughts.

When I first got the bike, it was quiet. I think it started when I first cleaned it. So first question would be, can lube make that much difference? When I lube, it is quiet for maybe 20 minutes then starts to get noisy.

Second is that I have managed to get it so that certain gears are more quiet. In particular (50-34 up front btw) in the 11-32 the 11 is fairly quiet the 12 is silent, even after a five hour ride it was still silent as far as I could tell (if there was noise the wind was louder). Then though the next four cogs are pretty darn noisy. The 20 is better, it is not quiet like the 12 but compared to 13-18 it is more quiet and the sound is continuous/rhythmical, which makes it much less annoying; a continous fairly low volume rrrrrr. The 22 is similar but a bit louder and above I actually haven't tried as I synchro shift into small ring.
In the small ring 25-28-32 are noisy but like the 50-20 combo, bearable and not too loud and then 18-22 are again pretty quiet. What is going on? I am pretty sure the low limit on the RD has something to do with it. When the bike came from the shop, as I said it was silent (maybe the lube as asked above) but also the limit was not quite right in my eyes so I changed it slightly. Shifting was perfect except going into 50-11, that took a long time. I am wondering if they set it like that because they realized it affects noise? And me playing around with it, the better the shift from 50-12 to 50-11, the noisier the drivetrain is. Noise is subjective, but I am very sure this is the case.

Going back to all the threads on this, there is one person who made a comment that sounds exactly like me, they said that they can get either the top or the bottom of the cassette silent but not all of it. Does this make sense, can this be that the whole system is set up so that only certain ratios work well? Do I need to experiment til I get the bottom to work well?

Kabuto

I don't have any suggestions for you, but since I'm having similar problem with a Dura Ace 9150 drive chain (I posted a thread earlier today here) I am very interested to see if anyone has some suggestions for you, and how you get on with sorting out the problem. Good luck!

Iride01 

Did you use Ultegra or DuraAce before? I didn't and some of the noises I hear from my Ultegra Di2 R8050 do seem a little odd from the quietness that was my 105 5800. I put if off as just different materials used for their construction. Particularly the cassette.

I don't think they are loud enough to be noticed by anyone but me, except for maybe when with others at times it might be real quiet, peaceful and smooth road.

Cleaning the cassette pretty much assures me I'm going to hear some tinny sounds on the next ride.

Barry2 

My Ultegra 8050 gets loud between lubes.
After every couple lubes I drop the chain in the Ultrasonic for a good scrub.
Cassette gets dunked when grubby, about ever other chain cleaning.

I'm using Dumonde Tech lite Formula, but I'm open to a better solution.
Hey this stuff's gotta be good ... has ":Lite" in the name and my Bike is yellow, this lube makes it smell like bananas.
Whats not to luv.
(Yes it's really banana scented.)


Barry

ZHVelo

But that does not explain that some gears are more quiet and that moving the position of the derailleur also seems to impact noise levels. Nor that after using lube there is basically silence for 20 minutes, but only 20 minutes.

jadocs

Yes lube will make a difference, specifically the viscosity.

Chains will make different sounds on different cogs just due to the nature of link size and rotational circumference.

Iride01 

Why doesn't it explain why some gears are more quiet? Different size bells, drums, horns, produce different amounts of sound, why would a different size cog?

You are going to have to drive train noise with a chain. If you are sitting there in the quiet of your home with your bike in the stand, you are going to absolutely hear every roller slap the tooth it's engaging and the links shift position on the tooth as they free themselves from the cog.

Even on the road you might hear this when ambient noise is low. You friends riding next to you may or may not hear it. Some sounds only travel far enough to annoy the rider.

But I've no idea if I'm talking about the same sounds as you. Perhaps you do have something odd, but 20 minutes after lubing you hear the sounds again makes me think you are ignoring the facts of life with a chain and cog.

Not that some aren't pretty quiet, but none are perfect when ambient sound is low enough.

ZHVelo

I just find it highly questionable. A half a turn in the low limit screw has such an impact on observable noise, and noise between cogs? The 12 cog is silent but the 13 is loud? If size matters I would expect it to get gradually worse til you get to the size cog that is worst. And it is normal that lube's noise effect is gone after only 20 minutes? And why was the bike silent at the very start? I am not saying it is impossible or whatever, just that all these things are very surprising and there must be an underlying reason. I cannot wrap my head around it.

ZHVelo

Maybe I then need to ask the shop what lube they had on.

Kimmo 

I bet it's the pulleys, which Shimano changed with the last generation, presumably to deal with wider cassettes, since I saw somebody say they got missed shifts to larger cogs when they tried the old style pulleys.

ZHVelo

Ok methinks I will order the old style pulleys then. I am guessing it would be big chainring with larger cogs? That would be fine for me, you can always just go into the small ring one gear earlier, even now I think I don't really use the 7th-11th cog on the big ring.

sweeks

How does the low limit screw have any influence on any but the low cog?

ZHVelo

I don't know, but I think I was just imagining things.

However, what did seem to help was raising the pulley by altering the B-screw. I did that last night and thought it was better. Today's ride was mostly up so not too much in high gears, however, after over 2 hours, coming back down the 11-12-13 all seemed incredibly silent. Particularly the 13, that was night and day before coming from 12 into 13, while today, and yes it was downhill, more wind and so on, but putting the head really down to listen even after two hours riding it sounded a LOT better and 14 I think I started to maybe hear something, but also so much better than before. I did notice a sound going from the 28 into the 32 (so lowest gear) but that was on the shift, which performed, and the gear was fine so if that is the only drawback I would be very happy. Let's see tomorrow on flat ground.

Reason I did that was because some googling suggested about 5mm difference between pulley and cassette and just looking at the photo online of what it should be and comparing to how mine was, it was way lower. So I turned it left by two 1/4 turns (because a 1/4 turn already raised it surprisingly much I thought).

Kabuto

ZHVelo when you raise the guide pulley to be closer to the largest cog on the cassette, be sure to also check there's no slack in the chain when its on the small chainring up front and smallest cog you can access on the cassette (9th or 11th?). A slack chain in that gear combo may result in chain slap and nasty damage to your chainstays.

ZHVelo

Thank you, how can I do this? The Di2 only lets me go into 34-13, it will not move to the 12 if I am in small chainring up front and I think I read on google that it is supposed to do this.

Kabuto

That's correct. By 9th cog I mean the 13T cog, so 34-13. Check there isn't chain slack in that combo.

Its possible to override the default setting to enable shifting to the 12T and 11T cog when in the small chainring, but that's another story.