eek! an ironic squeak!

[Thomas Lynn Skean]

More than one, actually. A whole, shall we say, "chain" of them.

Yep, my first week of enjoying the silence of the Silver shifter and I hear this tiny squeak. Once. Twice. Silence. Oh... must've been some truck's brakes on the distance... or a gate hinge. Wait, no... there it is again. And again. And again.

Within five minutes I was hearing a steady series of rather load squeaks when and only when I pedaled. Hmmm... what would Grant do? What would Sheldon do?

So I hopped off my bike and lubed my chain. Took less than three minutes, including digging the lube out of my capacious SaddleSack. My chain has never actually squeaked before. But it has made scrape-y grind-y not-good noises when I don't practice Good Chain Management. So I do carry lube.

The effect was immediate. So now my chain is silent once again. The Peace of the Silver Shifter is restored.

Or it was temporarily. Soon enough I heard another isolated squeak. But it never grew into a continual series of them. For the remaining half-hour of my ride home from work, my chain would squeak every nowand then.

In a classic bit of irony, as I get used to the joy of quiet, smooth, balanced, engaging friction shifting with my new Silver shifter cockpit, my chain now squeaks every time I shift gears.

Yours,
Thomas Lynn Skean

[Joe Bernard]

Welcome to "I had no idea how much a car could rattle until I bought this electric" world.

[Rick]

Sure it's not the pedals? Try lifting the dust caps, adding some lube
to those and see what happens.

[Thomas Lynn Skean]

Well, the irony has passed. Probably simply due to the lube having a chance to work its way through the pieces parts of the chain, and maybe helped by having simply shifted a few more times and covering the whole range of rear cogs, the squeak is gone as of this morning's commute. I'll have to clean my chain thoroughly this weekend; the lube I use on the trail helps right away but gets the chain gummy and ugly in hours (not the week or more of my normal ice wax lube).

 

I was amazed at how... "debilitating" that squeak was. It didn't *prevent* me from riding, of course. And I doubt that it would do damage to anything other than the chain, even medium term. But it was so annoying (and certainly not just to me; everyone I encountered *had* to be annoyed to some extent) that I really wouldn't ride that way for very long.

 

Yours,

Thomas Lynn Skean

 

[Thomas Lynn Skean]

On Friday, September 16, 2011 10:45:04 AM UTC-5, Rick wrote:

Sure it's not the pedals?  Try lifting the dust caps, adding some lube
to those and see what happens.

 

I was sure. The sound was definitely chain-motion related. It actually appeared to come mostly from the back; which I guess seems reasonable since the chain is put through its tightest turns there.

 

There's a little "you had to be there" at play here... the reduction in the noise following the lube of the chain was from near continual to near absent. A sound would be as a thousand words.

 

Yours,

Thomas Lynn Skean

 

[Eric Norris]

Have you checked the jockey pulleys? If they're starting to run dry, they will tend to squeak more in gear combinations that put more pressure on pulleys.  Most pulleys can be dismantled and lubed fairly easily.

--Eric N

Sent from the iPad 2

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[Thomas Lynn Skean]

 

On Friday, September 16, 2011 12:25:38 PM UTC-5, Eric Norris wrote:

Have you checked the jockey pulleys? If they're starting to run dry, they will tend to squeak more in gear combinations that put more pressure on pulleys.  Most pulleys can be dismantled and lubed fairly easily.

--Eric N

Sent from the iPad 2

 

Well in this case it wasn't the pulleys alone originally; there was too big an immediate change from lubing the chain. If the pulleys had become involved after initial onset, then lubing the chain must've eventually leaked enough lube onto them that they also have gone quiet. But I wouldn't expect that the pulleys had been dry enough; the derailer has <1,000 miles on it. I replaced it recently after a fall bent the prior derailer  and the derailer hanger. (That gave me an "opportunity" to use my colleague's derailer alignment gauge, which is really a satisfying tool to use. Using it properly isn't hard. And when there's an actual alignment issue to begin with, the results are noticeable immediately afterward; drivetrain's quieter, shifts are quicker, all's right with the world!)

 

Yours,

Thomas Lynn Skean