I just bought a new Giant OCR Composite 2 a week ago. Love the bike. I'm still getting used to having 10 speeds in the rear cassette.
The problem I am having is in keeping the front wheel true and a creaking and pinging noise coming from it (the front wheel) when I ride. I've looked all through the threads here and haven't found anything like this from anyone else. The wheel is a Shimano R550.
Thanks for any help that you can offer.

The standard remedy for pinging is switching to high octane.

Seriously, it could be spokes, loose skewer, computer magnet hitting the sensor, etc. It's hard to say from the small amount of information you provide. Since you mentioned a difficulty keeping the front wheel true, I assume you are truing it yourself. I'll say that either there is somrthing wrong with the wheel, or you are an ultra-perfectionist. Front wheels just don't need truing very often.

After truing the wheel, stress-relieve the spokes by grabbing a pair of parallel spokes in each hand and squeezing as hard as you can for a few seconds. Don't worry - you won't break anything! Wear gloves if you want. That should take care of the truing problem.

Thanks for the reply.
Higher octane. Now why didn't I think of that!
Yes, I have been trying to true them myself. And yes, I might be a little too anal about it.
I used to true my other bike without any problems. But, it was an older style with about a million spokes.
This wheel only has, maybe, sixteen and they are straight pull. I'm not real familiar with these.
I'm pretty sure it is the spokes. I don't have a computer sensor on the front wheel. And the skewer
appears to be OK.
The noise is happening with every revolution of the wheel when I am on it, and is very annoying.
When just rolling the bike around, there is no noise.
I have not tryed grabbing the spokes like you say. Can you do that with straight pull spokes? If so, I will do that.
Thanks again.

Sorry, I didn't realize you have radial spokes on the front. Still, I think you can stress-relieve them - just pick a convenient spacing and try it. The wheel is so simple with no spoke crossings that it's difficult to imagine anything making noise. If you ride really slow, can you find out which spoke is down when you hear the noise? Maybe that one is binding at the eyelet and could use a tiny bit of oil there.

Try making the skewer tighter or looser and see if that makes any difference. Since your bike is only a couple of weeks old, why not take it back to the store for them to look at?

I also have a carbon bike, and can tell you that the location of noises is harder to pinpoint than on other bikes (steel and aluminum) I have owned.

Too, too true.

On my Ti bike, if you tap the rear QR with a pump, the sound seems to emanate from somewhere else entirely. First noise I heard coming from my front wheel was merely my seat wedge bag smacking the CF post.

Sound travels....

I don't have a solution for the problem, but there's no need to stress relieve a radial wheel. In fact, it can't be done.

Stress relieving involves relieving the stress at spoke crossings. Since the spokes don't cross, there's nothing to relieve.

A new spoke (and a recently tightened one) has regions of high and low stress inside and at the elbow. Squeezing pairs of spokes causes the high stress areas to yeild slightly, resulting in lower stress throughout the spoke. A high stress region on a spoke its more susceptible to fatigue failure. I first learned this from the book "The Bicycle Wheel". If you Google it, many sites will say it is important, but don't explain why, or give erroneous reasons.

I have a set of Mavic Cosmic Equipes which I've had for many years. The wheels were built using a compound on the spoke threads to keep the spoke/nipple from loosening.
Every so often, I'd get a creaking/pinging sound from the rear. This sound was due to inadequate tension on the spoke(s). Eventually, I broke a spoke in the rear and decided to replace all the spokes and re-build the wheel. When I re-built, I used oil on the threads for the reason that the anti-seize spoke compound seemed to make it more difficult to turn the nipples and get adequate spoke tension. This wheel has been noise free for a year now.

Javaman,
Took your advice and tightened the skewer. Now only makes noise when I stand and peddle.
Thanks for the help. I'll see if it settles down anymore on the next few rides.
I will be going back to the LBS when my new stem comes in and see what they have to say.

Thanks again everyone.

Cool!

My bike does the same thing!

It must have been the stroker that gave it so much compression