Practically new bike - loud drivechain..

chatlow

Have a Giant TCR Adv 4 with 105 setup. It's only covered 10 miles in the 2 years someone else had it. When I spin the crank I have noticed it's quite loud (cassette/jockey wheels). Chain still has the new sticky feel (hasn't been lubed in a long time) so is it likely that some dry lube will sort out the noise or is it true that new bikes go through a 'wearing in' stage?

bigflangesmallsprocket

Have a look at the back end and make sure everything's nice and clean, any grit there will make it noisy. From your description it sounds like the chain is barely used and still has the original grease on it. It won't do any harm to give a light oiling though, just add little dabs on the link pivots.

The most probable cause is the very fact that it's new. Braking and changing gear will stretch your wires and compress the cable outers slightly as they bed in. So your rear mech may now not be exactly aligned to the sprockets. Get down and have a squint at the rear jockey gear wheels and sprocket alignment. To keep things simple lets assume that the maximum inner and outer movement allowances are correctly set up. Where the wire inserts into the rear mech, there should be an adjustment screw, if you turn this it will move your rear gear side-ways, in or out, toward or away from the wheel. You'll see that this centres the chainline onto each sprocket. Change gear so that you're in one of the middle sprockets on the back. Then just play with the little screw till the sprockets/chain/rear mech wheels all look lined up. Then have a go changing gears, right through the range and back again, and rechecking alignment. If the adjustment screw is already at one of it's limits, then you'll need to undo the wire and do it up again accordingly to give you more adjustment play.

The cables may also be a bit dry, stopping full free movement of the wires. If thats the case it wouldn't do any harm if you added a little oil into the cables as well, though obviously that's a bit more work.

chatlow

Thanks. I should have also said that I have indexed the gears so the changes are now perfect. I'm almost positive the noise isn't due to grit. Seems the motion of the chain going over the sprockets and jockey wheel is causing the issue - so maybe some drops of lube will cure it.

dodgy

Sounds like the chain has just dried out, lube it, ride it. After 10 miles it will probably be fine.

bigflangesmallsprocket

Ah well, I was bored anyway

chatlow