Mysterious creak
 

Wondering if anyone has ideas of what to check for to get rid of creaking sound when left pedal under pressure? 90's 9 speed Campagnolo Chorus groupset. Have tightened up cranks and (Italian threaded) BB, have put on brand new wheels and cassette. Chain is almost new. pedals are shimano MTB and almost new. Columbus Genius frame.

I'll check shoes and seatpost tonight. headset is fine. Thanks.

The biggest single source I've experienced for a "creaking pedal" is a crank with a worn square taper. If you take the bolt loose, you can usually verify by pulling the crank off the spindle with your hands.
I have fixed these a couple of times with a tiny bit of JB Weld and some carnuba wax.

I'll second the worn square taper on the crankset. If you have a spare crankset go ahead and put it on and see if the creaking is still there. Nowadays I have more noise and creaking from saddles than anything else... think I gotta lose weight.

Diagnostic for creaking might best start by determining if the creaking occurs while both sitting and pedaling out of the saddle, or just one or the other.

Quick, relatively easy tests can include tightening the rear QR, lubing the seatpost in the frame (and at the cradles, rails, bolts and/or pivots).
Then it's on to testing for creaking by applying torque to the handlebar, swapping rear wheels, tightening and/or swapping pedals, swapping pedals, etc.

Titanium bottom bracket spindles caused relentless creaking on a couple of my 90's bikes, and chainring bolts also come to mind, diagnosed with a drop of WD40 at the chainrings/spider tabs and checking bolt tightness.

Adding that cartridge bottom brackets sometimes need re-greasing between the cups and the bearings/cartridge, and that pedals even sometimes creak if under-tightened into the crankarm.

I have a creaking under pressure on my commuter. Never tried to closely diagnose it (yet). It creaks once per crank full revolution, or is it chain full revolution???
It has a SM-BBR60 with 5800 crank-set on it. Chain has some 3k+ miles on it - all cassette and chain rings have same age.
I measured the chain wear and it is almost none.
This 5800 group-set was in a different frame last year and I did have the same creaking, that seemed to be coming from the quill stem handlebar.
But, never figured it out completely.

When I had a creak it was the BB - I hadn't had the cartridge out in years. Removed it, greased the threads, creak gone.

Could be anything from a loose/dry chainring bolt to a cracked crankarm. Or, as others have mentioned, BB issues. Very difficult to diagnose sometimes.

SP
OC (but not for long), OR

I have a bike with 120 spacing. It creaks on the 2nd smallest cog and only the 2nd smallest cog. It doesn't matter if the freewheel is a 5 or Ultra 6. It doesn't matter which set of wheels or which freewheel is on there. Go figure.

It could be anything and it's impossible to diagnose properly over the interwebs. That said, more often than not when a bike came into the shop with a creak in the general area of the BB, it was from the taper to crank interface.

Pull the cranks. Wipe the spindles clean with a rag, and do the same with the tapers. Grease the hell out of the crank/extractor bolts and washers. Reinstall to correct torque.

This is campy spec. OK. Many will not like this answer. Please don't quote Jobst or Sheldon at me. Mechanics don't have time for theory. If it works it works.

If that doesn't work, go through everything one by one. Take it off, grease it reinstall. Start with the easy stuff. Seatpost, pedals, chainring bolts, stem, bars, and of course the BB itself.

The last 'creak' I had was due to the seat bolts not being tight enough. Not the seat post binder bolt but the two bolts atop the Campagnolo seat post that adjust the tilt and hold the seat in place. They were tight, just not tight enough.

Remember, when you push on the pedals, they push back just as hard. Their push-back goes into the rest of the bike - the brake hoods, handlebars, stem, seat, maybe even the other pedal (if you're doing it wrong).

Are they creaking. or screaming?

Creaks and croaks can even come from between tubular tire base tapes and rims, if there was not enough glue applied between it and the rim.....

A fellow over in the road cycling forum just this morning found the creak to be coming from his helmet.

Even if you think it's not the spokes... it might be the spokes. New wheels or old. Especially black spokes. Creaky like Boris Karloff's mansion.

If you have a scented candle around, it'll probably have softer wax than plain paraffin bars. Scrape some off with a fingertip and squidge it between the spoke crossings. Doesn't need to be precise, just squidge it around in there and squeeze the spokes together a couplafew times to be sure the wax gets into the friction area.

That's what finally fixed a persistent creaking in my hybrid with new wheels.

The creaking and squeaking began a couple of months after installing the wheels, so I didn't suspect the spokes for a long time. On the plus side it motivated me to redo the BB, everything I'd neglected for a couple of years. But it wasn't the crank arms, BB or lock rings, hubs, chain, cassette, any of the usual suspects.

What finally tipped me off was when the creaking suddenly worsened, but sounded like a worse version of the same creaking, a couple of weeks ago. I'd rolled off a low, curved curb as gently as I could, unweighting myself. Immediately the creaking worsened. The rims were true, nothing obvious. Back at home I removed the rear tire, tube and rim strip, applied drops of Boeshield T-9 to the spoke nipples and waited awhile for it to penetrate. Then I loosened and retightened every spoke to ensure they weren't twisting. Didn't really help and now I had to retrue the rims.

A week later, same creaking.

Wet lubes on the spoke crossings didn't help. The black coating -- paint, enamel, powder coating, I dunno -- created a lot more friction than chromed, stainless steel or aluminum spokes. Those all tend to ping a bit with new wheels for a few rides, but the black coated spokes are a PITA.

I had an old used up scented candle container that I was about to throw away, and decided to experiment with the softened wax. That did the trick.

I added the same candle wax to the freehub splines, cassette lockring and threads, etc. Just to be sure.

Grease might work as well but would leave more residue. The wax was easier to wipe off without leaving a greasy residue. Any excess would flake off during a ride. And it was free... well, a dollar before it was burned up.

My SPD pedal/cleat interface creaks at times.

Thanks for the advices
 

Next issue...
 

See post #6 (?).

With SPD pedals, unless they are the cheapest versions (or with very high usage), the problem is typically the long, threaded "nut" that secures the barrel/race of the spindle cartridge solidly inside of the pedal body.
The external spline (if plastic) or the external hex (if aluminum) should first be checked for tightness.

Sometimes when the nut has been loose for a while, the contact surfaces in the pedal body may have worn to the point where the nut only bottoms out without securing the cartridge barrel/race solidly in the pedal body, but there is a fix for that.
With the spindle cartridge removed from the pedal, a few swipes with a file on the snout on the pedal body will allow the nut to tighten in further towards the barrel/race inside of the pedal body, thus allowing full tightening tension to bottom on the race instead of on the pedal body.
And with the spindle cartridge out, the bearing adjustment can be checked and corrected at the same time if needed.

The cheap SPD pedals with the plastic splined nut are somewhat notorious for their tendency to having the bearings (and/or the inside of the pedal body) wear and become loose, so periodic bearing readjustment and/or filing of the body will be necessary. They work well enough with the bearings somewhat loose, so most folks won't even notice that the bearings have excess play until the rubber seal is getting squashed and possibly severed/dislodged by excess axle movement.
It's on these cheaper SPD's that diagnosing where the looseness is coming from can take an extra step or two after a first attempt is made of just tightening the external retention nut. The cheap SPD-R road pedals, even the "carbon" R550 model, are the same in this regard, having cheap/soft bearings and plastic retention nuts.

Mysterious creak usually just means it's time for an overhaul and greasing and re-torquing every fastener. You could spend a lot of time trying to diagnose the problem, but once you get past a few obvious culprits, you don't really save much time by trying to diagnose unless you're experienced with finding creaks and the bike is right in front of you. Checking a potential problem area, re-torqing, then testing to see if it solved your problem, doesn't save time compared to just redoing the fastener. There are always a few tricky ones, like the shoelace tick, but those can be tricky to diagnose too.

Mystery clicks and squeaks
 

My 1983 Colnago Super frankenbike sat idle for over a year. When I took it out for the first ride I noticed a click and a creak that hadn't been there before.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...cc5324a63c.jpg

I checked all of the usual suspects: cranks, BB, pedals, wheels, spokes, saddle, seatpost, stem, bars and so on. Switching wheels, I discovered that the click was coming from the freewheel. It was a standard width 6 speed Suntour New Winner in good condition.

It only clicked on the 4th and 5th largest cogs right after coasting. That was easy to fix, I removed several of the shims under the outer bearing lockring and that tightened it enough to eliminate the clicking.

The creak was still a mystery. I pulled the cranks and checked the Phil BB. I had used an old Phil Wood BB that had been on a number of bikes since the 70's.

The problem was the new stainless steel rings that I got from Phil had a slightly smaller ID than the original rings that went with this BB.

They didn't seat all the way on when I originally tightened them with a torque wrench. I figure that over a years time the mounting pressure caused any burr or whatever to give way and the rings seated properly on the cartridge shoulders but now they were loose enough to creak. I reinstalled the cartridge and re-torqued the rings. Problem solved.

I found the source of an annoying click on another bike. Turned out to be a cracked Campy Record rear axle cone. The crack wasn't noticeable to the naked eye but when the locknuts were tightened the pressure caused it to spread. A mini pothole had formed in the ball track from wear on both sides of the crack. It would click under load with each rotation of the wheel.

Replaced the cone, problem solved.


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...9ef880357f.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0457907a9e.jpg

verktyg :50: