Creaky - GONE!

Chris King to the rescue! Since the installation of my new bottom bracket, the annoying creak I've had in the lower regions of the Giant Defy Advanced is GONE! Rode 42 miles on Saturday and even pounding up Delhi Hill near the end of the ride (short, steep climb) nothing. Not a sound.

Nothing to see here - from the outside anyway...

As an added benefit, things just "feel" better. Somehow it's more rigid, and seems to roll more smoothly. Intuitively, this makes sense - there's a reason you buy precision components with precision bearings.

The unit comes in several colors, but I'm not even sure you'd have seen them with my frame. Besides, a little bling goes a long way.

While this was a bit pricey, the piece of mind and performance improvement make it more than worthwhile. If you've got an unhappy bottom bracket, I would definitely check out the Chris King bottom bracket solution.

-Sean-

Creaky: Follow-Up

The lower-end creak that I wrote about a while back on my road bike got worse last week. I did just over 41 miles on Saturday and a bit over 35 on Sunday of last weekend. Both days, after 15-20 miles the creak returned and got progressively louder.

I've been chasing this one for a while. First I thought it was the cleat/shoe interface. Tightened it. No dice. Replaced one of the T-nuts that was bad. No dice. Tried my back-up shoes and found the creak still there. OK, so process of elimination. Check the chainring bolts. All tight. Not that. Maybe the pedal? Nope. It's tight, too. And the creak primarily happens when I'm out of the saddle, so that eliminates a whole host of possibilities there.

With all of these items checked, this leaves one suspect - the crankset/bottom bracket. And modern technology has left me in the dust on this one.

Here, I digress. Through a friend I'd gotten connected to a different shop than the guys I've traditionally gone to. They did my component swap when I upgraded to Ultegra on the Giant OCR. Then when I picked up my Giant Defy Advanced, they swapped the components over to it. This Winter, I had them put fresh grease in my Shimano 105 hubs. They did the work quickly and cost-effectively, but I kept finding little things either left undone or done not-quite-right. Most were minor (not tightening the front brake mount down tight), but it seemed like something always wasn't correct.

So, this time, I returned to Great Lakes Cycling (in their super cool new location!). Owner Oscar Bustos has always been a good guy to deal with and head mechanic Steve Sauter built me some SWEET wheels for both my road and mountain bikes. A quick inspection reveals too much play in the bottom bracket and a more complete disassembly shows that not only did the previous shop sell me the wrong bottom bracket, they installed key parts incorrectly. Awesome.

Now, this does give me a cool opportunity. I love the Chris King brand, but haven't had an excuse to own any. And it turns out the Chris King now offers a press-fit bottom bracket to fit my bike! A little more expensive than the Shimano, but c'mon; it's hand-machined, 100% made in America, and bombproof. Done like dinner -- one is now en-route from Portland, Oregon. I'm hopeful to get it back soon, maybe even in time for a weekend ride. But we'll see.

Either way, this will repair a longstanding, highly annoying problem. I am pleased. And even happier with a cool component upgrade! A review will be forthcoming.

Standard? What's Standard?

Last year's addition of the Giant Defy Advanced carbon frameset offered SO many advantages. And one problem. The seatpost. In a well-meaning effort to boost aerodynamics, Giant gave the Defy a proprietary aero seatpost. What's the big deal, you say? Well now I've got no way to secure it in my Park Tools workstand. The Park's clamp only handles round profiles. And the rear brake cable runs externally beneath the top tube. Crap.

I check the Park web site - no, they don't have a retrofit clamp. Too bad, IO love Park's stuff. These guys are hands-down the industry leader for bike-related tools, in my opinion. On a recent visit to my favorite local bike shop, Aberdeen Bike & Outdoors I see a Trek with an aero seatpost clamped into a Bontrager adapter. Sweetness! But, of course, the Bontrager model was made specifically for the Trek Madone - I'm guessing the bike uses a Bontrager seatpost.

So, I turn to my friend Google. And sure enough, they do make an adapter. A little eBay search and I have one on the way for around 30 bucks. Problem solved. But even this system requires four different inserts depending on the Giant model you have. Wow!

Bicycles have become fascinating beasts. While standardization was always a little sketchy, it's become even more so. A quick Google search reveals no less than four standards for bottom brackets. And this is just the current crop. Someone will invent five more new ones, plus have to support legacy standards that aren't in this current crop. The bottom line is that buying a new frameset or putting new cranks on a bike you have will require a new bottom bracket (as was the case when installing Profiles on my mountain bike.

I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to run a bike shop service department. I spent a lot of years growing up working in shops (mostly for the discounts, not for the money...). You could use a pretty standard set of tools to work on 99.9% of bike problems. I think I had two sizes of spoke wrench and maybe three freewheel pullers. A single crank puller worked for most scenarios. I can only imagine what the investment today would be.

My clients in the tool and die industry work with a pretty common set of standards - US, Metric, and JIS. The Society of Automotive Engineers was created at least in part as a standards body. ISO and NSF set standards for quality and food safety respectively. I wonder why no one has proposed this for bicycles?

Just my random musings, the result of a lifetime spent around bikes and working on them. For me, my problem is now resolved (or will be once my adapter hits US shores from somewhere in Korea).

-Sean-