How to… Fix a creaking bottom bracket
Everyone experiences a creaking bottom bracket at some time in their lives. The most straightforward way to deal with it is to learn to live with it. Some riders have had a creaking bottom bracket for years and hardly even notice it any more.
If you can become one of these people, you will be much happier than being the sort of person who wants to fix it. Bottom bracket creaking is the sort of problem that can leave you like the guy in the cartoon who destroys his house trying to kill a mouse with a sledgehammer.
But if you insist, let me say this. Grease something. Grease is how you stop creaks. Tightening things up is not how you stop creaks, however much you might think it is. Tightening things up is how you strip threads, and is the main reason that bike shop mechanics invariably holiday in the Seychelles.
If your bracket is old enough to be threaded (stop tittering at the back), grease the threads. Teflon tape is another solution that everyone talks about but no one actually uses, not least because you have to steal it from a plumber. More modern brackets are press-fit. So if they want to creak, you’re better just letting them get on with it.
Also note that any creak, from anywhere, will sound like it’s coming from the bottom bracket — cleats, quick-releases (yes, they creak), bars, saddles…. So if you’re really serious about creak elimination you will have to check pretty much all of the bike. Don’t forget your knees.