masi61

I have a mystery creak around the headset area on my titanium road bike. Here’s a picture of the front end of the bike:




My Ritchey c260 stem and matching carbon bars were what I thought were somehow making the random “crack” sound that made me fearful that my carbon bars were somehow failing, possibly by improper torquing or some other installation error by me. So I removed the faceplate from the stem, then put carbon grip paste on the inside of the stem and faceplate where it engages the 31.8 carbon bars. Then I brought the (greased) T25 cap screws up to 5nm torque, slowly and in an X tightening order.

Turns out that the disturbing cracking sound still persists, it seems to happen as I turn the handlebars left and right several times creating a bend in the housings. Which got me thinking: could the stiff strands of wire in the compressionless housing be responsible for this mystery noise? If you look at the photo of my shifter area you will see white housing connected to the externally cabled Dura Ace 7800 integrated shifters. I used some old Shimano Deore XT housing that I believe is 5.0mm externally, quite a bit stiffer than your everyday 4.0mm road derailleur housing. At the time I installed it I thought that the stiff housings would give crisp shifts. I believe they do deliver crisp shifts but when turning side to side I get the impression that the stuff builds up tension in the longitudinal compressionless strands that culminates in an occasional “crack” followed by the housing righting itself for a time only to have it build tension again during side to side turns making the cracking issue intermittent and ongoing.

So just curious to know if anyone with a mountain bike with mechanical shifters, have you ever run into housing making such random cracking noises? I greased the ferrules and the cup on the down tube braze on cable stop a while ago but may clean all this out and apply fresh grease there in case the twisting housing is cracking inside the ferrule as it twists.

Thanks for any ideas on this.

joeruge

I have a similar 'cracking' which occasionally shows up on my Trek Madone 5.2. It also happens when I twist the handlebars around. It doesn't happen when riding, the handlebars don't move much when actually riding. It happens when I the bars can swing pretty much all the way, left or right.

I never thought it was the cable housings. But when I drop the fork and wipe down the headset and then reassemble, the noise goes away for like 6 months. Still not sure what causes it, but that seems to make it go away.... Anyway, that's my experience with a 'clicking' front end.

Crankycrank

Yes, not uncommon. The noise is the bare housing wire ends scraping against the ferrules/adjusters. It helps if the housings are cut perfectly square but even then it can start with the noises over time. Plastic ferrules can help some as long as they hold up and don't start cracking. If you're really anal like me I have made some tiny little hard plastic washers that fit inside metal ferrules/brake adjusters with a hole for the cable to go through that will quiet down some of the noise but that was only as a last resort. This is also very common for shifter cable housings at the downtube stops.