Disappointed in Pipedream

HHenderson

On the recommendation of one of the UK's foremost mountain biking magazines, I recently purchased a Skookum 29 inch Rohloff titanium frame from Pipedream.
At first, all went well: the geometry was excellent and the bike rode well. Then the creaking in the seatpost began. I tried lubricating but the post would not hold and started sliding under my weight (95 kg). I consulted everybody I could think of - Internet, mags, etc. - and the advice was to try grease for carbon frames. This did admittedly stop the sliding problem but the creaking came back, occurring roughly every 3rd ride.
I tried various seat collars (3 to be precise) from cheap to expensive. Again to no avail.
The seatpost is a Thompson Elite 400 mm.
I contacted Pipedream on several occasions but they were spectacularly unhelpful.

I live abroad and was especially keen to support the British cycling industry so this was very disappointing.

rockmonkeysc

Are you sure it's not the saddle?

shindig

Had the same problem with a reverb post. I greased the seat rail/seatpost interface with carbon grease and it solved the problem.

benpinnick

Have you measured the internal diameter of the seat tube? Sounds like its oversized. It happens. Measure it, prove its wrong, send it back.

rockmonkeysc

What counts as oversize? There must be some tolerence.

paul.skibum

Seat rails/clamp check.

Also creaking under pedalling load might be the BB?

I haven't had much exposure to Pipedream so tried their website. It's crap and doesn't work so a lack of response from them might not be overly surprising......

The Rookie

Measure the seattube AND the seatpost and see if they are close to what they should be.

Carbon gripper paste I find best, not grease.

Also, as noted, could be saddle to seatpost, so if you have alternatives, try them,

HHenderson

Right, many thanks for all those suggestions. Will try them and report back.
Pipedream are impossible to get hold of - once I'd paid for the bike, they stopped responding to my emails. Nor do they pick up the phone.

The Rookie

Maybe there is a hint in their name....a good bike from them is a pipedream?

More seriously, if you get the facts sorted and it is definitely a frame issue you could consider rejecting it under SoGA and/or a small claims track claim, although you'd have to come to the UK for the hearing everything else can be done remotely.

But first I'd try gripper paste after measuring frame as well as the seatpost (just to be sure) also try a different saddle and better still a (different and known good) saddle seatpost combo even if it means buying a £4 shim to try it.

Not sure if its the website or my Co firewall but I can't get hardly anything to show on their website so no idea what size the tube should be reamed to but search engines suggest 30.9mm?

warpcow

Thomson posts are pretty notorious for being on the low-end of tolerances for given sizes. Just try a different post.

HHenderson

Thanks, will try all those suggestions.
The creaking itself is less annoying than the way Pipedream dealt with the problem, or rather didn't deal with it.
I have not completely lost faith in the British cycling industry - have had great experiences in recent years with Pace in Yorkshire and Burls.
Now if only the euro would get up off its knees, I could put some more business their way....

The Rookie

Going to be a long wait then......

In many cases of course it's also debatable how much of the money stays in the UK!

njee20

A lot of ti frames have an internal 'shim' for the seatpost - which can creak as it moves slightly. Saw a number of Litespeeds do it in years gone by.