Rear wheel started creaking - spoke rub?

[jannmayer]

The rear wheel on my XC bike has started creaking after about 1600 miles. I've narrowed it down to the spokes rubbing where they cross, mainly on the non-drive side. (The noise mostly goes away when I put a piece of tape between the spokes at the crossing. The noise is also pretty much the same tone as when I pluck the spokes, so I'm fairly certain that is what is going on.) I hear the noise whenever I put torque on the wheel, both by pedaling hard on a larger cog and by braking.


The rim is an Elitewheels carbon rim. The hub is a Goldix ratchet. It's 28 spokes, 2 cross, straight pull, and I used Pilar Wing spokes with brass nipples. The spokes have even tension, and the drive side are around 120 kgf.


The wheel has been great up until now. Why am I getting noise all of a sudden? I'm considering replacing the spokes with DT Swiss Competition or similar round spokes, but I'm not sure if the issue will come back.


(And no, oiling the spoke junctions didn't help much.)

[Pedaldancer]

All new wheels relax a tad.
You can't get rid of this even when pushing the spokes during the build very carefully.as a result of the relaxation the spoke tension goes down a bit. In a good wheel the wheel itself stays trued.

I would guess that's what happened to your new wheels. The spokes relaxed a bit and then the relative movement between the crossed spokes is enhanced and this can lead to music. The measure against that is rising the tension back to the original state.

[TommyGun]

Spokes making sound is unfortunatelly many wheels problem. Steel spokes touch on crossings and eventually the make a sound while pushing harder. I had that problem with almost all my steel spokes wheels. Luckaly now I am on carbon spokes on all my wheels, and they so not touch where they cross.

You can fix your issue, that you from time to time lube or spray every spoke crossing on the wheel (where you isolate the problem). Like when cleaning the bike and lubing your chain, just ad a drop on each crossing and move both spokes a bit so it gets between the spokes. But wash/clean the rest of the lube as otherwise it will atract dirt. I always used silicon spray. It worked perfectly for several hundred kilometers. 

[jannmayer]

Thanks for the insights.


I tried lubing the spoke junctions but that didn't help.


I might have the spoke tensions a bit low. I re-measured the dimensions and I probably need to use a different line on the Park Tools tension meter chart. I think I'll try increasing the tension a bit to see if that helps. If not, I'll probably re-spoke it with round spokes instead of bladed.