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Spent 3 hours chasing a phantom creak on a 2019 Trek Emonda, and it was the bottle cage bolt the whole time
I'm not proud of this one. Customer drops off his Emonda saying there's a creak under load, mostly when he pedals hard. I pull the crank, grease the spindle, re-torque to spec. Check the BB, clean and re-grease. Chainring bolts, pedals, seatpost, saddle rails, even the headset. Nothing. I take it out for a test ride, and the creak is still there, but now I notice it only happens on rough pavement, not smooth. So I start tapping everything with a plastic mallet. The bottle cage bolt on the downtube was loose by maybe a quarter turn. Tightened it, creak gone. Three hours of labor for a bolt I could have checked in 30 seconds if I'd just tapped things first. Does anyone have a systematic tap test or a checklist for this kind of thing? I'm tired of guessing.
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tessa_adams34h ago
A quarter turn on a bottle cage bolt. That's it. Three hours of pulling cranks and greasing spindles for a bolt you could've caught with a five second wiggle test. The part that gets me is you had the bike on the stand and never thought to just grab the cage and shake it. Rough pavement only was your clue, and you still went through the whole drivetrain first. Bet the customer was thrilled with that labor bill though.
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