Squeaks. On a bicycle there can be nothing more annoying then a squeak while you’re riding. Even worse is when you can’t figure out what it is. Well, I’ve had one of those squeaks on my mountain bike since about June.

I tried everything to get rid of it. I checked all the obvious places for a squeak including cleaning and greasing my seat post, seat rails, stem bolts, handlebar clamp, bottom bracket, cable housing ends, cranks, water bottle bracket bolts and pedals to start. And when that didn’t solve it, I tore apart all the pivots on my Yeti 575 and re-built them.

The result? The squeak was still there. I continued on my quest and basically ripped my frame down to nothing and re-built the bike from the ground up.. And the squeak was STILL THERE..

To be honest I was scratching my head. I had no clue what could possibly be squeaking. In fact, I threw in the towel in August and just came to the conclusion that the wet Fall and Spring here in New England had taken it’s toll on my old ride.

Then, as luck would have it, I was mentioning my squeaking story to someone and they said "I had a friend who had the same problem. His squeak was caused by the derailleur hanger against his frame. Once he greased everywhere that the hanger and frame touched, his squeak went away."

Guess what. My squeak is GONE! While I did grease the hanger bolts I did not grease the hanger where it contacts the frame. Cool!

And then at that moment I heard Jenny, my Instructor from Barnett’s Bicycle Institute, in my head -- A squeak is caused by 2 metal parts moving against each other. Find the moving parts, grease them where they make contact with each other, and the squeak will go away. If only Jenny had come into my head in June!

–Bob

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