Singletrack Sisters Race Team: Creaking knees?

You know that annoying creaking noise.

Just a pre-warning, this post gets a bit geeky. :-)

The whole of 2014 and part of 2013 (two different frames from different manufacturers) I was plagued with a creak from my bike. If you, like me enjoy a ride in the woods with little or no noise apart from the rush of the wind, the crack of a stick, the rumble of your tyres and the noises of exertion , then you have probably felt my frustration with creaks and noises from your bike.

I cannot say that the frames were at fault, as I had the same noise on two different manufacturers frames during this time. The bottom brackets were from different manufacturers, and towards the end of last year I also changed the crankset to the Rotor Rex 1 I now run. So what is the common denominator I hear you ask? The press-fit.....

As an engineering solution, I can see why the manufacturers would want to go in this direction, but from the point of view of large-scale production and using materials such as carbon-fibre with open tolerances, press-fits become a head-scratchingly difficult thing to get right.

My Whyte from 2013 was a PF30 design, which is a larger OD, narrower system for MTBs. The Wilier was/is a BB92 design (Shimano) with a smaller OD, and wider spacing, but also for MTBs. In the Whyte I ran the following combinations:

Original FSA BB with original FSA crankset (30mm axle).
Original FSA BB with adapter and Shimano XTR (24mm axle) crankset.
Wheels Manufacturing PF30 BB with FSA crankset (30mm axle).
Wheels Manufacturing PF30 BB with adapter and Shimano XTR (24mm axle) crankset.

In the Wilier I have had the following combinations:

Chris King PF92 BB with Shimano XTR (24mm axle) crankset.
Rotor Ceramic PF92-30mm BB with Rotor Rex 1 (30mm axle) crankset.

All these set-ups suffered with some noise of differing levels, mainly when applying more power, but in some cases just during normal pedalling. The result of this lead me to researching alternatives for the Bottom Bracket. I liked the solution offered by Hope, whereby the press-fit was present, but the bearing carriers on both sides were threaded to one another to increase the stiffness of the system by applying a pre-load over the two halves either side of the frame. Due to my choice of crankset however, I could not find a Bottom Bracket that would fit the BB92 frame dimensions, and the BB30 crank dimensions that I required. That was until a visit to the Copenhagen Bike Show in March this year. There I met with Henrik from Atakama Bike who had a range of BBs on display from Tripeak. They seemed to be nicely made, well thought out, and ultimately had the same design cues as the Hope I had seen previously, plus the compatibility that I needed for my frame/crank combination.

I spoke to Henrik briefly at the show, and he recommended I look at his webpage www.atakamabike.dk to find the product I needed. A few clicks later and I had ordered one for both mine and Malins bikes. Having now arrived in the post I can report that the BBs are very high quality, with smooth bearings. Looking at the design in more detail they have included tandem bearings on both the drive and non-drive sides in order to try to increase the lifetime. The fitting was a joy, and way easier than the usual press-fit faff. The threads are machined with tight tolerances meaning that they are very smooth. The crank fitted snuggly into the bearings and pre-loaded up nicely. So far on the short test runs I have no noises at all from the bike! I haven't had a chance to ride any super long distances yet, but judging by the build quality I am hoping for many trouble-free miles.