Yep I get the same too, often its the rails.Can’t be arsed reading back...positive it isn’t seat rails? 9/10 times it is for me.
I can tell you the answer, but you dont want to hear it.
Well, you're not wrong, but I'm cheap and it's a custom frame that fits my weird dimensions like a glove. So I am willing to tolerate these infuriating little dramas and the time necessary to hunt down and eliminate. Seatpost is a 3T Stylus 25 LTD Stealth Carbon, 31.6mm.
@several: I've tried the bike with a different seat to no effect previously.
So I have re-inspected the seatpost area looking for micro cracks, and still cannot find any sign of anything. Given I've had to get 2 previous frames repaired, I feel like I'd know one when I saw one (open and shut case, Johnson! ). However, this did lead me to discover something interesting - the cutout for the seatpost look like it has to compress much more than it should - see photos. I can get a folded post-it note in there really easily. Does this indicate that I might need to apply a small shim?
View attachment 352276
... rather than 1.7mm for a 30.9 to 31.6 shim.
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I put a little bit of grease on the seat rails where they contact the seat post clamp.
That said the few times ive noticed a creak its actually been resolved with a couple drops of oil into the mould on the saddle where the rails attach. I just put a couple little drops of oil onto the rail near the ends and tip the bike so the oil runs into the ends.
Travis.
The plot thickens. At Oddjob's suggestion I borrowed a set of verniers from one of my mechanical engineers and checked the seatpost dimension (I vaguely recall doing this once to check seatpost diameter before buying). When I measure LHS to RHS, I get 31.7mm, which is within tolerance of normal. But when I measure front to back, I get.... 31.2mm. It looks as if the seatpost is slightly ovalised, which explains the small gap I observed earlier. Given the gap is around 0.4mm or a bit less, I am going to try jury-rigging an aluminium can shim (roughly 0.1mm) to take up the slack and see if that helps.
I really can't count without a spreadsheet.0.7mm.
Too much of a stretch from 0.7 to 2.3mm.
Seems like the post-it note is the perfect thickness and you should just wrap the inserted part of the post in post-it notes.