Nimbus Hatchet wheel creaking noise

I have a 26" Nimbus Hatched from unicycle.com with nimbus 32h disc hub. As you know the wheel is dished to accommodate the disc. I don’t know if it is the dishing that makes the wheel weak, but I hear squeaking noise (likely from spokes rubbing one another) when I mount/hop. Anyone have same problem?

I was thinking of replacing the hub with non-disc hub, and replace the cranks with KH Spirit cranks for mounting disc, but I found the brake tab on the Hatchet is on the left side, and you can only mount the disc on the right Spirit crank.

Try checking out the tightness of your spokes.
Guessing it’s not the bearing if the noise is only when you mount or hop.

Check:
-Are the spokes appropriatly tightened? (I’m 90% sure that that is the issue)
-Are the cranks tight, and fully seating on the spacer (easy to confuse as the sound will be in roughly the same situations)?
-Bearings? unlikely, but not entirely impossible that those make a similar noise
-Pedals can sometimes make similar noise too.

It’s not the dishing making the wheel weak, there are plenty of dished wheels out there with zero issues, and plenty of not dished wheels that make creaking noises. (And don’t get me started on how terrible of an engineering compromise putting the disk on the cranks is…)

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What finnspin said, except for the 90%. I think the cranks are just as good a candidate as the spokes.

Regarding dished wheel on the Hatchet. When the Hatchet first came out, it had a 65mm Surly Marge Lite rim that had to be dished, meaning the spokes on the disc side are shorter and have higher tension than the spokes on the none disc side. UDC has since then replaced the Surly rim with a 85mm Nimbus rim that doesn’t require a dished wheel. The spoke holes are offset to the right so that the rim can be centered in the frame with equal spoke lengths and spoke tension on both sides. To me this seems like a brilliant solution. I have the Surly rim, and it’s not possible to get it completeley centered in the frame.

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I suspect you just need to stress relieve the spokes. For the hatchet the best way of doing this is grab 2 sets of consecutive parallel spokes and squeeze both sets of them together at a time. Then move onto the next pair around the rim. You should hear as you go around the noises decrease.

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@unimyra Sorry you are wrong. I bought my hatchet in December 2016. It was the first run after your surly rim and had a UDC 85 mm non-offset rim. I had problems with centering it, but Roland @wendino from UDC Germany solved the problem by lacing the than new off-set rim to the wheel. (I think it was a year or one and a half later)
Thanx again.

Maybe @rogeratunicycledotcom can say a few words about that.

I don’t think that the rim configuration is causing @sledgehammer the noise problem. It may be contributing to it though.

I have not great experience with building the hatchet wheels having only built 3 or 4 of them but I have not heard of one that was impossible to true. Josh in the US is probably the best person to ask about that.

Oh, I’m half wrong then. Someone I know bought a Hatchet in 2019, and his rim is like I described. I think you have mentioned this before, but I forgot.

It was shortly before the old forum shut down for a while and I thought you didn`t noticed it. Here is a photo of my hatchet the day it arrived not yet completely assembled. I hope you can see the non offset spokes.

Thanks for all the replies. I checked the cranks and the pedals and they are all very tight. I did spoke tension relief per roger’s suggestion but it did not solve the problem. I found the spokes on the non-disc side is definitely looser than the ones on the disc side, though.

I noticed the rim is surly marge lite and the wheel is indeed not centered. It is skewed to the right/non-disc side. If I tighten the spokes on the non-disc side it would move the wheel to the right even more ;(

Because of the offset with some spokes more inline with the axis of the wheel, those spokes have to be under more tension. That is required and normal. If you pluck each spoke and listen to the tone, all the spokes on each side should be about the same. However the tone of the plucked spokes will and should be different on both sides of the wheel.
Part of my regular maintenance is to check the spoke tension between most every ride. If I find on that is “out of tune”, I tighten a little till it is in tune.

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I’m done - now we’re tuning our unicycles?? :slight_smile:

Anyhow, just curious, since I have no experience with building or maintaining wheels, what’s the rundown for this? What tools are needed, how necessary is it, and how long does it take? Thanks!

There is a bunch of useful information on youtube about building and truing “bicycle” wheels. It will take more time reviewing how to do it then actually doing it but anyone can do. The Minimum tool needed is a spoke wrench. Here is a past thread and there are many others.

The other option is a local bike shop.

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Thanks!

Is he an active member of this forum?

Almost all my creaks came from the cranks. To prove it, take them off, grease them and put them back on. Or just rotate them to a different position. If the noise disappears, it was the cranks.

True, but note that rotating the cranks also changes which spokes have the most force applied. If the noise stops after moving cranks it still could be that noisy spokes are not being moved so much.

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Hi,

i had the same problem with my Nimbus Oregon with Hatchet wheelset.

Try this and the noise should be eliminated:

The thread is in german. But look at the pictures and you will understand.

Best regards,

Sven

He call it “Speedbooster”. “Noise reducer” is right, too.

Please note: it could be the spokes but I would guess it will be the cranks. Hear me out, ISIS is still a press fit just like cotterless (square taper) but has splines for better holding the press fit surface area wise. The bolts can be as tight as possible and still make a creak. I check this by removing the bolt and seeing if the crank arm pulls off, you will need to check both sides this way. If the arm pulls off by hand you will need to install a thinner spacer between the crank and bearing to reintroduce the press fit. Unicycle.com will be releasing a video here in the next 2 weeks on choosing a proper spacer.

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