CreakCreakCreakCreak

My Cinelli bar & stem combo is driving me absolutely insane. It's an older
XA stem with the old style Campione del Mondo bars. Love the aesthetics,
hate the creaking. I've been loading the stem up with grease, including
greasing the area where the bolt goes into the stem, the cone threads,
everything I can think of. The grease works for about 3 rides, then it
starts again.

FWIW the bar & stem are "new" despite being "old" - I purchased them new
unused just a year ago. Also I have the same setup on another bike, and it's
pretty quiet.

Anyone have suggestions besides greasing? Or maybe a different type of
grease?

(PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per Patrick W:
Anyone have suggestions besides greasing? Or maybe a different type
of grease?

Dunno from Cinelli, but the spiel I got on my Thompson MTB stem was
that grease anywhere but on the screw threads was a Bad Thing.
Seemingly in support of that, I've dissembled it, cleaned all
surfaces with alcohol and carefully reassembled it a couple of times
already - successfully getting rid of creaks.

Having said that, I tried that routine last week and got only
temporary relief - now the Fushlurggener thing is creaking again...

It looks like simply welding the whole thing together is the best way to go!
--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

(PeteCresswell) wrote:
snip ............................................
Having said that, I tried that routine last week and got only
temporary relief - now the Fushlurggener thing is creaking again...
Pete: It's "furshlugginer". Please use your spellcheck.

Per Patrick W:
Anyone have suggestions besides greasing? Or maybe a different type of
grease?

Dunno from Cinelli, but the spiel I got on my Thompson MTB stem was that grease
anywhere but on the screw threads was a Bad Thing. Seemingly in support of
that, I've dissembled it, cleaned all surfaces with alcohol and carefully
reassembled it a couple of times already - successfully getting rid of creaks.

Having said that, I tried that routine last week and got only temporary relief -
now the Fushlurggener thing is creaking again...
--
PeteCresswell

Patrick W wrote:
My Cinelli bar & stem combo is driving me absolutely insane. It's an older
XA stem with the old style Campione del Mondo bars. Love the aesthetics,
hate the creaking. I've been loading the stem up with grease, including
greasing the area where the bolt goes into the stem, the cone threads,
everything I can think of. The grease works for about 3 rides, then it
starts again.

FWIW the bar & stem are "new" despite being "old" - I purchased them new
unused just a year ago. Also I have the same setup on another bike, and it's
pretty quiet.

Anyone have suggestions besides greasing? Or maybe a different type of
grease?

Here's something that did the trick for me:

1) Loosen the stem-to-steerer binding bolt and slide up about 1/4" to
examine the front of the quill.

2) If you see evidence of rubbing (as in quill rubbing against the
headset lockring), this could be the squeak source.

3) If so (or even if you just want to try this), wrap teflon tape around
the stem, *JUST* where it rubs against the headset lockring, then
reinstall. The idea is to keep the teflon well away from the expanding
part of the quill, since it's friction there that keeps the stem in place.

It's a bit tricky to get the tape to slide into the stem-lockring gap.
The tape tends to get scraped off by the lockring as you insert the
stem. Since it's the front that matters (since weight on hbars flexes
the stem until you have contact in front), you can try to push the bars
rearward a bit as you slide the stem in. A double layer in front helps
squeaks, but makes it harder to get the tape in place.

This technique has pretty much ended my Cinelli creaks, at least for
several months on end. Once when I had a recurrence, I pulled the stem
and examined the tape - it had chafed through. Replaced tape, problem
again fixed - at least for a long while.

Again, for safety, keep the tape away from the expanding part of stem.

Good luck,
Mark

"Dave Thompson" wrote: (clip) It's "furshlugginer". (clip)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
No, I think it's "verschlugener." It starts from the verb schlagen, which
has lots of meanings. The main one is: "to hit." The cognate in English
is "to slug."

I believe Mark Twain wrote about this. According to him, if you know "zug,"
"schlag," and "also," you know most of German.

My Cinelli bar & stem combo is driving me absolutely insane. It's an older
XA stem with the old style Campione del Mondo bars.

First, make sure you're not mixing diameters here; an XA stem *could* be
26.0, and the bar *could* be 26.4. However, I can't imagine it's possible to
make that mismatch work at all, so that's probably not the issue.
Nevertheless, be sure that the stem does read "26" or "26.0" on it.

Second, hate to tell you, but those bars were notorious for being creakers.
The sleeved aluminum-over-aluminum design wasn't very well thought out. In
some cases, the only fix was to use a different bar... which was a problem
that typically required changing stems as well, since there weren't many (if
any?) 26.4mm bars & stems besides Cinelli.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com


"Patrick W" wrote in message
m...
My Cinelli bar & stem combo is driving me absolutely insane. It's an older
XA stem with the old style Campione del Mondo bars. Love the aesthetics,
hate the creaking. I've been loading the stem up with grease, including
greasing the area where the bolt goes into the stem, the cone threads,
everything I can think of. The grease works for about 3 rides, then it
starts again.

FWIW the bar & stem are "new" despite being "old" - I purchased them new
unused just a year ago. Also I have the same setup on another bike, and
it's pretty quiet.

Anyone have suggestions besides greasing? Or maybe a different type of
grease?

Per Dave Thompson:
Pete: It's "furshlugginer". Please use your spellcheck.

.... And my apologies to the late Mr. Gaines.
--
PeteCresswell

In article
,
"Patrick W" wrote:

My Cinelli bar & stem combo is driving me absolutely insane. It's an older
XA stem with the old style Campione del Mondo bars. Love the aesthetics,
hate the creaking. I've been loading the stem up with grease, including
greasing the area where the bolt goes into the stem, the cone threads,
everything I can think of. The grease works for about 3 rides, then it
starts again.

FWIW the bar & stem are "new" despite being "old" - I purchased them new
unused just a year ago. Also I have the same setup on another bike, and it's
pretty quiet.

Anyone have suggestions besides greasing? Or maybe a different type of
grease?

Creaking from the stem and bars is a symptom of imminent
failure; the bad kind of failure where you are traveling
30 kph and the bars break off.

It is a symptom, but not proof. The creaking may have
another cause. You must determine the source of the creak.

Inspect the bars and stem for cracks. Clean the surfaces
and examine closely under strong light from shallow
angles. You may have to remove the bar tape and examine
all of the bars.

--
Michael Press
The rest of the world.

Patrick W wrote:
My Cinelli bar & stem combo is driving me absolutely insane. It's an older
XA stem with the old style Campione del Mondo bars. Love the aesthetics,
hate the creaking. I've been loading the stem up with grease, including
greasing the area where the bolt goes into the stem, the cone threads,
everything I can think of. The grease works for about 3 rides, then it
starts again.

FWIW the bar & stem are "new" despite being "old" - I purchased them new
unused just a year ago. Also I have the same setup on another bike, and it's
pretty quiet.

Anyone have suggestions besides greasing? Or maybe a different type of
grease?

The sleeve on the handlebar making it 26.4mm often creaks. No real fix
other than replacement with a 26.4 hbar w/o a sleeve, like the Eubios.