Creaks, Squeaks and Outright Embarassment....

 Well having praised my Super Acciaio in previous posts I'm harbouring a dark secret.... Hmmm it all started after around 500mls. I've fitted a Campag Athena groupset to which I've had to use the Campag BB30 adaptors. Throughout the various internet forums you'll find many discussions about this topic namely creaking bottom brackets! Now from day one I've lived in fear, bordering on paranoia, of the inevitable squeaking, creaking Campag crankset. And so it came to pass that from a beautiful virtual silence suddenly a ticking appeared which slowly became a voluminous creaking every pedal turn. This would sometimes quieten but still obviously there, other times it would announce itself to everyone in earshot. Theres nothing worse than riding a beautiful bike whilst passing bystanders and emitting a sound akin to honeymooners bedsprings. Well it does make you ride faster to save your embarrassment, always look for a positive in bleak times. 

 Well I started investigating beginning with the main suspect the BB. I'd installed the whole crankset according to Campags recommendations ( also viewed their video several times ). Correct torque was applied to the crankbolt with the BB30 cups greased and press fitted. One thing I had noticed over the first 100mls was the drive side cup migrating out around 1mm. I believe this is why many suggest using loctite to lock the cup, I'd avoided this as it could cause problems if I wished to remove the cup at a later date. In hindsight it may have been a non-issue as the driveside bearing is on the crank rather than embedded in the cup so the cup could be fixed more permanently. I'd run with this small 1mm gap for many miles prior to the creak so it didn't make sense. Next suspect hauled in for question was the chainring bolts, the recommendation here ( from the internet ) is to undo all the bolts thoroughly grease and re-torque as appropriate. I checked the torque of all the bolts and all was well, the mystery deepened. Every time I'd hold the bike and stand hard on the pedal pushing downward I'd hear an audible creak. The pedals threads were already greased but I removed, checked and regreased to no avail. Anyway whilst out riding last week I unshipped my chain when multishifting on both levers, not my normal method but circumstances forced me, including a bus. I went home and checked my front shifting on the bike stand, in doing so I started adjusting the front mech cable tension. After 15mins of tweaking my shift was back to square one, no perceptable change still spot on. The rear hasn't been adjusted since fitting, still indexing fine on 11-speed. I took the bike out for a ride and silence. This had me worried, was it going to rear it's head at any moment?  Well I've now done just over 100mls and still silent. Unless the problem re-occurs I believe the root cause of the issue was the tension in the front derailleur cable and its interaction with cable housing, down tube adjuster and the down tube amplifying the sound on every pedal stroke with the consequent flexing of the frame. This may well be correct as the issue was worse under high torques i.e. pushing up a hill or hard acceleration. In my adjustment I must have reduced this tension enough to stop the interaction whilst maintaining the fast front shifting. Campag is very nice in that respect.

 Creaks and squeaks are difficult to narrow down and normally unique to a particular bike setup but for now case closed, hopefully not to be re-opened.... anyway fingers crossed but the current silence is definitely golden! Any change and I'll update the outcome. 

Update:

 All was quiet for around 150-200mls then it returned, arrrggghh. Anyway during the course of riding after around 20mls the creak suddenly went and silence returned. I will most definitely investigate chainrings/carbon spider interface but the bb seems silent. Its difficult to narrow down whilst riding, I suppose you could mount on a turbo and get someone to locate the sound, anyway the investigation is reopened hopefully for a brief time! 

Update Number 2:       

 Well the latest, I've been riding in complete silence other than the normal nice sounds of a bike ride for around 200mls now. I removed all crank bolts except the main crank arm fixing and greased all with teflon grease thoroughly. Put them all back and initially thought it hadn't worked but then silence! The grease must have slowly permeated the whole of the metal-carbon interfaces and it was back to day one of quietude. I've ridden hilly routes and climbing in silly high gears pushing high torque and.... quiet. When the bike was in creaking mode you could hold the bike stationary, put weight on the drive side pedal and you'd hear a sharp tick this lead me to thinking it could be chainring connected, also when riding riding inner ring was quieter than high gears in outer. We'll see how this goes, hopefully it'll stay quiet and with the passage of time my neurosis will go into remission :-).