I happen to have quite a few close encounters with “real” cyclists – by which I mean people who are seriously into road bikes and/or racing and have spent a pretty penny or two for their equipment. Not to mention their clothes.
What always amazes me is how incredibly quiet these bikes are as they pass by. I mean, I try to keep own my bike clean and adequately lubricated, but it’s nowhere near as quiet as the bikes these real cyclists are riding. It’s as if their drivetrain mechanisms don’t make any sound at all.
How can they be so friggin’ quiet? Is it simply a matter of cleanliness, like obsessively removing every speck of dust from the chain? Or is it more a matter of having superior equipment? Can a higher quality of chain/sprockets, for instance, really make that much difference in terms of sound? Whence does that divine silence emanate?
I recently bought a high quality bike (no, I’m not a Lycra clad roadie, just a dorky recumbent rider - there aren’t many cheap recumbents) and I too was struck by how quiet it is. I think part of it is cleanliness, especially of the chain - how often do you take off your chain, clean it in solvent and re-lubricate it? Serious cyclists tell you to do it every couple of weeks. I do it every month or two, mostly to keep my pants clean.
Then there is the adjustment - if the derailleur is not perfectly adjusted, it causes a slight bend in the chain and that can create noise. Also I noticed that the wheel bearings on good bikes are a lot smoother. You won’t notice it when you push the bike, but if you take the wheel off and try to turn the axle by hand there is a huge difference.
Then there is the ratchet mechanism in the rear hub which allows you to coast. Cheap hubs go click-click-click when you coast, expensive hubs don’t. Some race bikes don’t even have the ratchet - the pedals spin when you try to coast. (This is the norm for track competitions)
I wonder if frames can squeak on cheap bikes - expensive bikes have more stiff frames.
In addition, some cheap bikes have internal gears in the rear hub, usually a 3-speed. They are really noisy.
In addition to what scr4 said about clean, well adjusted chains, high-end racing bikes will use the narrowest tires available, running at around 120psi. This decreases the rolling resistance and the road noise at the same time.
There can be many things on a bicycle which rattle and grind such as loose mudguard stays, rattly light fittings and these are one hell of a job to quieten down.
Index gears are a particular cause because if there is a slight misalignment it will be present in every gear.Another cause of gear rattle is the chain crossover alignment, if you put the chain on the largest sprocket and the largest chaiwheel the chain itself is pulled across the teeth at an angle. Club racers would not ride in such gears knowing that a very similar ratio is available in a differant combination of sprocket/chainring but ordinary Joes are too lazy to do this, especially if their bike does not operate well in the first place.
There are very few freewheels available that do not have the conventional ratchet/pawl system and I personally have never seen them used as they seem to be either hopelessly expensive and heavy or hopelessly hopeless and heavy, thus virtually every bicycle will make that characteristic sound when freewheeling.A friend of mine used heavy grease when he was maintaining a freewheel and that made hardly any noise, didn’t work for long either as the grease hardened and he ended up with no drive at all when the pawls stuck.
Any cyclist who spends serious amounts of time will tell you that they hate all those little noises as peaceful progression is one of the true joys of cycling, as a result great effort is expended making sure everything works absolutely dead on.
When you get going on a nice day with the sun on your back and cool air early on a morning there is little that beats the gentle swish that accompanies every pedal stroke, the whoosh of spokes through the air and the precision click of a perfect gear change. Who would want to sound like half a ton of old scrap iron on such a day.
I think you have all pretty well nailed it, but as the owner of a bike shop, I HAVE to comment.
While it is true that the ‘ratchet/pawl’ mechanism is used in most freewheels, and that the noise produced is inversely proportional to the cost, there is one more critical difference…
Serious roadies tend to pedal most of the time, while we rank amateurs spend more time coasting. As long as you are pedaling, the ratchet/pawl noise is near 0, leaving you with only the noise produced by the chain and derailleurs, which, on a well-tuned bike, is insignificant.
Frequent cleaning and lubrication are vital…for the rider and the bike
You didn’t work as a copywriter for Shimano in a previous life, did you, casdave? Seriously, though, I know exactly what you mean here. Or at least I would if my bike were tuned well enough. Sigh.
Thanks for helping to clarify, Agent LeManof Verona, what I had in mind when writing my original post. That is, I was thinking of cyclists who are pedalling, and more about chains and derailleurs and bearings etc. than tires or rickety frames, which are more obvious as sources of noise. I’m always struck by the fact that all these moving parts can make so little noise precisely when they’re under the strain of pushing the bike forward. Poetry in motion, as they say.
Anyway, thanks to all of you for chiming in here. This has been educational for me, as usual. I’ll keep checking in, in case anyone has something to add . . .
It depends a lot on the specific rear hub, and not just its cost. I have one bike that is nearly silent (it’s a lovely old campagnolo hub) while another is incredibly loud, I think because the company likes it that way (I think that one is a Phil Wood or White industries-- can’t remember which, but something pretty spendy). I think the quiet ones are hipper right now, though.
I find that if I use the wax-based lubricants it sounds louder, too, as there isn’t much gooey stuff back there to dampen the sound.
I’m with M.K.. After my Campagnolo hub was packed with Campy grease it became almost silent. Inflate the silk sew ups to over 100 psi and if you’re pedaling, you are almost silent to the world around you.
PS: 1961 Bianchi Specialissimo (almost all Campagnolo)
This may come as a surprise but professional riders do not use grease in the bearings of their machines.
They will use fairly heavy oils since grease has a tiny amount of drag.It helps, of course, that they don’t have to buy replacements from their own pockets since their equipment is provided by their sponsors.This makes their machines noisier than mere mortals like us amateurs.
Freewheels are generally made with two pawls but Campagnolo use three which gives them a distinctive sound to those in the know.
Worn chains and sprockets give a graunchy feeling when effort is put onto them.
Replacing these is not always economic on the average street machine as Mr Shimano has priced these parts in such a way as to make it only marginally cheaper than buying a whole new machine.By the time you want these bits they are unavailable and you end up needing to buy a complete chainset, and possibly the gear levers which are often combined with the brake levers which then can mean the brakes themselves need replacement as they are not compatible with the brake lever/gear changers you just bought.
It is expensive to buy all Italian but when you want just a bolt or a single chainring you can get them at an almost reasonable price.
Mikan I’d pop round and sort things out for you if the fight across the pond were not so exorbitant - all I can suggest is that you invest in some good tools, these will last you through the lifetime of many machines so they are worth shelling out for.
Zenster-- nice. I like sew-ups. Husband has a Bianchi from around that same era (not sure exactly when. . . has an Olmo of that vintage, too), with some of the chrome still on it.
My favorite right now is an early '50s Raleigh Colt frame, done up single speed with hub drum brakes (looking for wooden rims, yay!). Viva retro!
M.K., check the world pages (worldpages.com) for Cycle Art in Vista, CA. This place is fantastic. They do ground up restorations of vintage bikes.
I saw a Masi done by them and you could not tell that it hadn’t come straight out of its 1960’s crate. They just might have those Fiame Yellow label rims you’re looking for.
All I need are the 1966 vintage Campagnolo no-name brakes from their first year of introduction to America and my bike will be complete. After the restore at Cycle Art, that is.
I’ve done many a long tour in the remote boonies of British Columbia. There’s nothing like being on a remote wilderness highway at dawn on a sunny June morning on a well tuned bike that is almost silent. Sometimes I feel like I’m flying and hardly notice the bike. The best part is sneaking past deer, moose, and bears feeding along the road. Sometimes they don’t notice you until you are past. One morning near Glacier park in Montana I passed a young bear beside the road who was bounding through the grass snapping the tops off of some tasty plant.
I have one of those bikes with a twist-grip click-positioning deralleur gear changer. How come whenever I adjust it to be perfect in first gear, its position in third gear is so close to second that the chain can slip into the gap between second and third – and whenever I adjust it to be perfect in third gear, its position in first gear is so far inward that the chain can slip inside the first-gear sprocket and thus out of the sprocket range entirely?
tracer, how are you doing the adjustment? There are a couple screws on the derailleur itself for setting the limits so that it won’t go past the smallest or largest cog. Then fine tuning the indexing is done with the cable adjuster at the shifter. Also, there are some Sram twist shifters that are designed only to work with Sram deraillers, not with ones from Shimano.
Tracer
The spacing between the sprockets is not universal.
For instance Shimano freewheels have a reduced space by .5mm between 2nd and 3rd compared to Suntour freewheels.
Since these are the two main standards and most manufacturers work to these it seems that you have a mismatch.
So now you need to decide which to change, the freewheel or the gear lever.I would replace the freewheel but if your chain is well used you may need to replace that too.If you are in the habit of stripping your freewheel you may have left out a spacer, but if there was no spacer here I would not fit one as it would simply put the spacing between the 3rd and 4th sprockets out.
Even Campoganolo have relented and follow Shimano spacings on their gear levers, in fact I’d reckon nowadays most are using this standard.
I’m not keen on those twist grip changers as they wear too quickly for my liking and the tolerances changing can soon make gear changes ropey, especially on mountain bikes where grit gets into all the cable housings.