Glad you were able to finally pinpoint and resolve it! Been there a few times in recent years among various builds. One was a known creaky sprung saddle (Conquest) that, similar to your approach, was eliminated with some extra Proofide worked around the metal frame. That particular saddle just wasn't a good fit for me and has since been opportunistically sold or traded. Other mystery creaks ended up being cracked alloy chainring bolts, loose BB cups, pedals, chains just needing to be cleaned/lubricated and de-tensioned (tight spot on single speed drivetrain.) One in particular was driving me nuts after ruling out part after part on an old project frame. There was a point where there were a few known creaks (same Conquest saddle, drivetrain noise, etc.) during some build concept trial and error but once I eliminated the known creaks I ended up with a new one. Similar to you I eventually pinpointed it to saddle/seatpost with standing and pedaling eliminating it.... did another saddle swap and it was still there... then it showed up while standing and pedaling on occasion too. I was already planning a larger scale overhaul of this particular frame, including a fork swap with a small cache of parts ready to go for my final rebuild when low and behold, while preparing to give my new seatpost a try I just happened be bent and looking at the right angle while tightening or loosening or just cleaning around the seat binder and top tube junction to find a crack along the inside of the side-tacked seatstay. A little thumb pressure revealed the entire joint had already given way with a loose seatstay causing all the creaking. I ultimately resolved it by abandoning the build since the frame was low end and not worth investing in repairs.
Now I have a recurring creak on my Clem that I believe is coming from one of the pedals, but time will tell! Brian On Friday, October 20, 2023 at 10:01:10 AM UTC-4 brok...@gmail.com wrote: > At some point this week, my new (to me) Atlantis developed a creak > whenever I pedaled. While standing and cranking, nothing... so saddle or > seatpost, right? The Brooks B17 I have on it is very old and broken in, and > it has never creaked before, but I decided to take it off, greased the > rails, a few drops of Tenacious Oil on the metal bits, cleaned and greased > the seatpost and clamp, cleaned out the seat tube with this long brush that > I have (think, long flexible bottle brush). Took it for a test ride, and > the creak was still there. > > So, now I proceed to deep dive into this. Remove and regrease the pedals. > Pulled cranks and cleaned the chainrings. Replaced the rusty chainring > bolts. Greased spindles and crank bolts. I didn't really want to remove the > BB - even though that was a likely culprit - but I left it alone. New chain > installed. Tightened fender stays. Checked cable housing and stops. Greased > QR skewers. Test ride again. Creak still there, and maybe worse. Damn it! > Why didn't I just pull the BB while I had all that disassembled?? > > After all this, I suddenly remembered that I had an extra saddle in my > parts bin. I felt stupid for not putting this saddle on first thing to test > my initial theory. Sure enough, test ride proved NO CREAKING. A-ha! I'm an > idiot. > > So, now to go full-on assault with this saddle creak. I flipped it over > and dabbed globs of Obenauf's around all the places where the metal > undercarraige meets the leather. Then, I took a heat gun (on low setting) > and melted the Obenauf's to let it ooze down into all those nooks and > crannies. I've never tried this approach before, but it seemed like an idea > that could possibly work well - for a while at least. Sure enough, it took > care of the creak. We'll see how long it holds up. > > Do you have a good creak, or creaky saddle story? How did you take care of > it? > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/e1334219-879a-443d-83ef-53fc910e04f8n%40googlegroups.com.
