Not It

Pride goeth before a fall and all that; the only wise man in Athens is the one who knows he isn’t wise; and there’s no surer way to be proven wrong than to maintain that you’re right.

All this was brought home to me in stark relief yesterday when the clicking noise coming from my bike as I turned its non-drive side crank just past about seven o’ clock that I was certain I had diagnosed and fixed over the weekend re-appeared with a vengeance. I was so sure that the source of it was the metal retaining cup and so very smug that my quick work of replacing it with a plastic one had done the trick that I bragged about it in print, and even though I realized at the time that I was tempting fate, I did so anyway, secure in my belief that I’d figure the thing out and rectified it.

Alas, that wasn’t the case at all, although for the life of me, I can’t imagine where else the noise could be emanating from. It’s pretty predictable, occurs at the same place in my pedal stroke every time and makes no difference what cog or chainring I’m running on. So what else can it be?

Frustrated, I put the bike up on the stand last night, pulled off the non-drive side cranks, unscrewed the plastic cup, and replaced it with the original metal one, lathered up extremely liberally with Phil Wood waterproof grease.

The good news is, that seems to have solved the problem for now; on today’s ride home, my cranks turned quietly.

So, while the noise is gone at the moment, I’m not going to claim that I’ve figured it out and fixed it; the source remains a mystery, but at least I’ve treated the symptom.

Completely solving the problem may require the purchase of a more expensive bottom bracket; I have no illusions, though, that I actually know this.