I apologise for the horrendous noise of my bike...

seajays

After riding in really bad rain, today things are dry again, but my front wheel spokes have started making a horrendous twanging, pinging noise continually (although with no discernible "rhythm"). It sounds like I'm dragging a tin can behind me.

I felt the need to apologise to everyone that I overtook this morning for the embarrassing racket coming from my bike! :oops:

I'm assuming that something must be off with the tension of the spokes perhaps? There's no obvious visual issues (perhaps the suggestion of rust at the crossover points). Some things I've read appear to be around simply putting a drop of oil on the cross over points and hub eyelets, however I'm concerned this may simply mask a more fundamental problem?

I did a bit of a "guitar string" test on each side and there are definitely some that sound higher/lower pitched than others, but I'm not sure whether simply tightening/relaxing them to make them sound the same is the right thing to do.

Should I simply take to the LBS, or is there anything easy I can try? I have the wheel off in the office at the moment, and have multitool with spoke spanner thingy.

timothyw

You're quite sure that no one has attached a tin can to the back of your bike then?

Generally, if I get weird noises from my bike after it has been out in the rain (eg this week), I give it a hose down back home in order to wash off all the crud carried up from the wet roads, after a relube of the chain this generally gets rid of odd noises.

I've never had a noise like you're describing though. You're quite sure a twig hasn't somehow got lodged somewhere?

Is there water stuck in the rim perhaps? Worth taking off the tyre and rim tape and shaking it out?

seajays

No - it's definitely the noise you hear when you squeeze two spokes that are crossing, the kind of "ping" noise as they give. You can feel the vibration of the "ping" through the handlebars!

roger_merriman

Seajays wrote:

No - it's definitely the noise you hear when you squeeze two spokes that are crossing, the kind of "ping" noise as they give. You can feel the vibration of the "ping" through the handlebars!

hmm that doesn't sound great. no snapped spokes etc? ie is the wheel true and spokes feel ok?

davis

You *have* checked both wheels, haven't you?

seajays

roger merriman wrote:

Seajays wrote:

No - it's definitely the noise you hear when you squeeze two spokes that are crossing, the kind of "ping" noise as they give. You can feel the vibration of the "ping" through the handlebars!

hmm that doesn't sound great. no snapped spokes etc? ie is the wheel true and spokes feel ok?

Everything looks fine. There are no obviously loose spokes and definitely no broken or missing ones. Doing the "guitar strum" test on the spokes certainly gives a wide variety of notes though! When the wheel is on it certainly appears to run true with no obvious side to side motion or anything, but then again I probably don't know what I'm looking for!

seajays

davis wrote:

You *have* checked both wheels, haven't you?

In terms of just looking at them yes - is there something specific I should check? The noise certainly sounds like the front wheel, and the small vibration when it "pings" I feel through the handlebars.

rower63

I've had exactly the same thing, though on a rear wheel, DT Swiss R1700, and after it'd been sitting in an attic for a few months.
Apparently when a wheel rolls along supporting its load (you), at each point when one single spoke is exactly vertical below the hub, that spoke, and almost no other, momentarily has reduced tension. If the tension is not high enough in that spoke, it will go completely slack for a moment, and then stiffen up again. This will very likely cause the pinging sound, and if you have many spokes at too-low tension, it'll make lots of noise. Mine did.
I tried tightening them up, but the threads were seized and all I did was twist the spokes, readying them for a snapping. At that point I ditched the wheel.

seajays

rower63 wrote:

Apparently when a wheel rolls along supporting its load (you), at each point when one single spoke is exactly vertical below the hub, that spoke, and almost no other, momentarily has reduced tension. If the tension is not high enough in that spoke, it will go completely slack for a moment, and then stiffen up again. This will very likely cause the pinging sound, and if you have many spokes at too-low tension, it'll make lots of noise. Mine did.

I think this may be it - I tightened three spokes which sounded "dull" when twanged by quarter of a turn each, and it did improve things - there was still noise there, but by no means as loud as it had been. I wonder if I should give them another quarter turn, or at what point I should desist for fear of messing with the wheel balance altogether.