I've been plagued by a creaking apparently from the bottom bracket for a while now. I've changed the bottom bracket (it needed doing anyway and I wanted to get away from the SRAM/Truvativ setup) but the creaking persisted. Having had a dig around on here and speaking to Orange I've finally solved it by cleaning (and greasing the relevant parts) of the rear quick-release and dropouts. In more detail:

– Clean muck from the faces of the dropouts
– Check / tighten the hanger bolts
– Clean muck from the knurled ends of the hub and skewer ends that bind with the dropouts
– Grease the face of the cam on the QR

Tada. Sorry to everyone I've annoyed the crap out of in the last few months.

Other possible causes of creaking

– Damaged/dry main pivot bearings
– Crank bolts
– Saddle/rails (easy to diagnose – stand up)
– Bottom bracket damage/play

Yup posted that 1 year ago – sorry

TBH I replaced my 5 QR with 10mm QR and now I don't have any creaking and dont have to clean or grease 🙂

foxyrider – it was your post that led me back to the QR (google found it). After having spoken to Orange who also mentioned the QR I got to work swapping / cleaning etc. Fortunately my drive is steep enough to allow me to reproduce the problem.

Will see how I go in the next few weeks and maybe will swap the QR. What specifically did you get?

Thanks!

Matt

little seal covers on main pivots? Remove bolt and cover, clean and refit 😆

Scuttler
If you have a Hope pro 2 rear hub, to convert to 10mm you would need these
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=18761
http://superstar.tibolts.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=287

My creak was caused by a noisy pair of freehub bearings in a pro 2, mines maxle so was unlikely to be dirt round q/r area. Have now swapped the whole hub to a hope bulb, quieter and I belive a bit stronger too. A friends creak was a dry freehub creaking under load, blob of grease on the splines fixed it.

lummox my bike creaks especially when in a high gear, could this be freehub? my hubs are hope pro 2, how do i get to the splines?

+1 from OP

had a five (sold now) with the same creaking problem……i greased everything on the rear QR including dropouts and cleaning them, making sure there was a plenty of grease on the dropouts themself, the QR axle and both ends of the QR including the cam end…and hey presto it was silent! i rang orange at the time also and they said the same…..

i was CONVINCED it was the BB area, but obviously noises can penetrate absolutly anywhere through the frame……

so 9 times out of 10 if you have a creaking orange five, that is likely to be the cause!

I went DT Swiss 100 RWS QR – It broke coz I overtightened it – If your carefull theya re fine. you could just try a bolt though 🙂

I thought you were going to have posted a pic of a new bike….. 😉

Riding mate of mine had a sub-5 and could never get it creak free.
1st yr we went to Spain there were 2 other blokes on Orange 5's and it was like some kind of old mans convention with all 3 of them creaking away…..at least I could hear them catching me up!

Good you got it sorted anyway….

Little seal covers on main pivots for me too – just had 4 hrs greasing everything – changed BB no joy 😆

Knacked bearings – you mean like this :

Even the outer ring is cracked. 13 month old.

carbon337 – how strange, doing my mates last week (remember the thread i started asking about removing?) and his were EXACTLY the same, about 16-18 months old, the bearings were sooooo rough its untrue, rusty everywhere, and exactly the same the outer seal bit had a crack in it! i dismantled it the same as you just to get an idea on changing/messing with bearings and the were totally kapput inside, im surprised he only had a little side to side play to be honest, the state of the bearing suggest hes lucky the swingarm even moved….

obviously not good bearings provided in the frames from day one, which is pretty bad given the price of the frame…

Mine had a creak, but the bearings were fine. It was eventually cured when I serviced the pedals.

Got a bad squeak form around the fork area – – reading the above, is it ok to grease the DT bolt thru cam nut face then?

they’re notorious for creaking if the rear qr is even slightly loose

i need to revise my answer, whilst the majority of it did help, upon dismantling the pro 2 to change it to a Q/R for another bike it was discovered that the axle had snapped.

So in conclusion, yes greasing the bits i did helped, but it was a snapped pro 2 12mm axle that was the root cause.

Now a hope bulb is still the fix i’d reccomend