Today I had a short ride with my KH24, first I got a clicking sound, I tried tightening the crank but it didn’t help. After a while I got a loud scraping sound. This scraping sound I could here if I held the uni up in the air and rotated the wheel, I guessed it was something with the bearings and carried the uni back home :(. After a bit of rest the scraping sound was gone. And I am now left with just the clicking sound, what could it be. Is the thing with the bearings something I should do something with, or just let it be.
I have been thinking about the possibility of spokes, how do I check this?
The KH & Summit wheelsets seem to be prone to noise.
First culprit is spoke tension. On a trip down to jagur-land the jagur-miester tensioned the spokes and that problem went away.
The next culprit is the cranks. They started squeaking soon there-after. Tightening alone didn’t solve the noise. I pulled the cranks and re-installed with anti-sieze. Problem solved.
The scraping sound could be from the large, thin, disc-shaped spacer. This spacer is basically a dust cap covering the bearing holders. It rotates with the axle so if it has been bent at all it may scrape against the bearing holder part of the frame.
As for the remaining clicking sound, I don’t know. You can check the bearing holders to see if they are over tightened. I have also had clicking develop in the pedal of my Torker DX, that is the same type of pedal as came with my Summit. It resolved by itself.
I had problems with a noises too, but on my MUni (not a KH).
It was the spokes.
It is really annoying when you hear a noise, but you dont know were it is coming from! The worst is when I had a pebel stuck in the tread of the tyre, and it hit against the frame on each rotation. It took me AGES to find out were the noise was coming from!
I had some noise coming from my KH cranks, but a bit of grease on the hub soon sorted that out!
Sometimes my set makes a noise almost like a ‘ping’, but I think that was just the pichbolts needing a good greasing. There’s this one trail near my house that is quite rough, not super hard, but you have to be alert cuz it’s pot-holed ground with grass covering it and there are some sharp turns. Anyhoo, I sometimes feel a clunk in my wheel as I ride, so I stop, pick the uni up and spin the wheel by hand and it still makes a slight noise and you feel the clunk through the frame. Anyway, I just thrashed it around whilst holding it andit eventually went away… It only ever happens on that trail… Spooky, no? Must be haunted or something. If it starts to happen elsewhere I’ll consider getting a priest in tho.
About half-way down the second page, I posted a link to download a file, which is an audio recording I made of the clicking/creaking problem I had. Listen to it and compare it with the noise your’s makes. Anti-seize was the fix for me.
I have a KH 24" Muni and have similar problems. When I first put my uni together (only around 3 weeks ago) I had a scraping sound when the wheel rotated.
I must have been eating extra spinach or something that day, as the reason for the scraping was my overtightening the bearing clamp bolts. This caused the aluminium bearing cover to scrape on the bearing clamp and to give the intermittent scraping noise.
Obviously, the way to fix this is to slacken off the clamp bolts then re-tighten them until they just nip tight (ensuring that both cap-screws are screwed in approximately equal amounts) and then to finally give each about a quarter of a turn to lock them. After doing this I’ve not had any scrape and, despite several off-road trips, the bolts have not required re-tightening at all.
As regards other noises, I also have a ‘click’ noise. I hover left foot down and almost since the first ride I’ve had a noise that seems to come from the left side, but only when hovering (it either isn’t there, or goes unnoticed, during normal riding and hasn’t yet appeared on the right hand side). After much prodding and poking, the conclusion was that it was definitely originating from the spline/crank area, but there was no obvious movement or looseness when I tried to re-create the problem by pushing and pulling on it by hand.
Being an obsessive engineer who is wary of damaging his beloved uni, I stripped everything down as soon as I could, cleaned and oiled all mating faces with WD-40 (don’t know if this is a worldwide product name - it’s just a light oil in an aerosol can), then re-assembled everything. This seemed to cure the problem and made me a happy man, but unfortuantely the noise eventually returned.
I have discovered that if I gently tighten the crank clamp bolt (the big one that you always hit your heel on), then gently tighten the pinch bolt (the cap screw that clamps the crank around the hub splines) and then alternate between tightening these two a little until everything is absolutely tight, that this apparently solves the problem (or has done so far anyway).
I didn’t have any anti-sieze grease when I re-assembled my uni, or would have used this on all screws/bolts/splines too. The use of anti-sieze cured a similar problem on a friend’s KH trials (these have the same hub) and so, as I have now acquired some anti-sieze (thanks again Roland), my job for tonight is to strip, clean, anti-sieze and re-assemble The Beast in a final attempt to solve the problem for good.
I’m also a little wary of the fact that the black paint that the cranks are coated with also covers the mating faces where the crank interfaces with the bearing/spacer/clamp bolt. The action of tightening the bolt soon causes some paint to flake off in this area, which must cause an imbalance (even a very small one) in the clamping load on the whole stack. I’m concerned that this might also be adding to the problem and so intend to stone these surfaces clean of paint before finally re-assembling.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has any similar problems/fixes as, as discussed in an earlier thread, it is bloody annoying to be riding along and to hear a noise coming from your uni.
Check the large bearing spacer. When the unis were assembled the spacer was oriented so that the tapered side faced outwards. This made the spacer VERY close to the bearing housing. If you hear a scraping sound it’s likely the spacer is touching the bearing housing.
Fixing this is easy- just flip the spacer around 180 degrees. This puts the tapered side on the inside and shifts the widest part of the spacer outwards slightly. This should solve the problem.
