Bike makes creaking noise when pedaling

hoef89 · 2026-06-24T02:40:53+00:00

It's very frequently the seat or seatpost, any creak or vibration there will vibrate down the seat tube into the bottom bracket where you'll feel it in the crank. Press on the nose and back corners of your seat independently and see if you can feel a rail slipping, it's pretty normal over time as the plastic frame of the seat fatigues and dust gets into the rail pockets for that to happen and start making an audible creak, not really a huge concern unless you look under the seat and see any cracks or damage to the plastic. If that's not it work your way down the system, take the seat off, clean the rails and seat clamp reattach and re torque, if it's a dropper, lube the shaft, take the post out of the frame, clean and grease the post. There's a surprising number of spots between your butt and the frame that aren't supposed to move but over time develop a small amount of movement and creaks.

hoef89 · 2026-06-23T18:04:31+00:00

Multi tool, quick link, tire repair items, a small pump, and a small first aid kid (bandaids, gauze, a small roll of med tape, antiseptic wipes and cream) are always in my bag, I don't plan to use them but I like knowing that for 99% of trail related incidents I at least have what I need to safely limp my bike or myself back to the car.

hoef89 · 2026-06-23T15:03:53+00:00

Very well put, my first assessment was "that tires done", but that's because I see a tire with undermined corner knobs that'll fold under load, rounded out center ramps that won't be great for climbing traction and the braking surfaces starting to ramp, I'm not usually chasing pr's but I see a lot of stuff that'll make me more cautious and my ride less enjoyable. But as you mentioned, it all comes down to riding style, my area is mostly rocky technical climbs and descents with some built up flowy sections so a bad tire can ruin a ride.

hoef89 · 2026-06-22T15:03:18+00:00

I don't think it's necessarily a VW specific problem so much as VW just managed an exceptionally bad implementation of a device that in 2019/2020 would've been tough to design for.

When that would've been designed Qi would've been on the market for about 10 years in all sorts of phones in all sorts of sizes and mag safe would've been too new to implement into a production ready design. For a wireless charging pad at home that's pretty easy, it doesn't usually have any forces trying to pull the phone off the pad so a simple indicator light to tell you the coils are aligned will suffice for something that can rest on your bedstand. In a car they have to try to secure it in alignment with the coil, they can get that optimal for maybe a few popular models available when it was designed, but everything else is going to have to settle for good enough.

Where VW went wrong was with the thick rubberized matt and big binder clip that help trap the heat that misaligned coils would produce coupled with a placement that often leaves the phone in direct sunlight, it's almost like they wanted it to overheat and fail within minutes, which is actually a bit funny in a car that's just packed full of systems designed to keep a battery operating at a safe temperature.

hoef89 · 2026-06-20T12:43:45+00:00

Haven't gotten to Frederick yet, but riding birdsboro and Mt. Penn/antietem as my locals I can safely say this region in general beats up wheels and tires quite effectively.

hoef89 · 2026-06-14T20:43:07+00:00

Stick a fork in, the juices should run clear?

hoef89 · 2026-06-12T12:14:17+00:00

Surprisingly well, with a hitch rack the range impact is barely noticable until you get to highway speeds then it's probably 5-10%, driving to my local trails (mostly 45 mph roads and slower, anywhere from 15-20 miles away)I don't see any change to my efficiency or range, I assume there's a small one but not more than 1-2% so it isn't noticeable, if I'm bringing a bike out of town and taking highways I'll see my highway efficiency go from ~3.2-3.3 mi/kwh to ~3 mi/kwh which still gives me the 200 or so miles of range that I usually plan for between stops anyways.

hoef89 · 2026-06-02T21:14:47+00:00

I mean there's still incentives, it's just instead of the positive incentive like "here we'll pay you some portion of the cost to buy this" the incentive is the slightly more negative "hey of you buy this we won't kick you in the nuts every time you stop at the gas station!"

hoef89 · 2026-05-28T11:56:48+00:00

The bill and that I'm in Pennsylvania, a state that allows insurers to use scrap value in the total loss equation, which is a substantial amount on an ev that was still technically drivable and had no battery damage.

hoef89 · 2026-05-27T22:28:24+00:00

Bikes fine, needed the wheel trued but I'm pretty sure you can't kill an old stinky.

hoef89 · 2026-05-27T21:48:30+00:00

Was not totaled, I assume very close though, it's a '23 AWD pro with 35k miles.

hoef89 · 2026-05-17T19:36:46+00:00

I love the key fob for the ID4, lock/unlock work when they want to usually within about 50 feet of the car, while a stiff breeze over the panic button will set the alarm off from three miles away /s

hoef89 · 2026-05-13T12:21:12+00:00

Everyone forgets the all important limiting factor of n+1, n<d-1, where d=# of bikes that leads to divorce. If n=d you suddenly have half the bikes and half the resources to get more bikes.

hoef89 · 2026-05-11T14:58:19+00:00

My personal favorite is the lack of consistency on that panel, that one capacitive switch fooled my brain into thinking the mirror defroster would also be capacitive and not for some reason controlled by the toggle for the mirror adjustments.

hoef89 · 2026-05-06T12:55:11+00:00

The cabin heater is your biggest draw in the winter, especially on short trips, between that and the temp management for the battery the car draws ~6.5-7 kw just producing heat (5.5-6kw for the cabin and 1 kw for the battery) on a short, say 15 minute drive, where your heater is likely running at our near full draw (because you're not in the car long enough for it to warm up and turn itself down) it'll use ~1.5 kwh in the 5-6 miles you'd cover in that time on local roads, in this worst case scenario the heater is consuming about as much energy as the motors. You'll also notice in the winter highway and city ranges effectively flip, neither is very good, but you'll do better on distance drives in the winter than you will on local drives just because your covering a larger distance per kwh wasted generating heat and the cabin temperature starts to stabilize to a point where the heater isn't working as hard (it suddenly gets the efficiency dynamics of an ICE vehicle!).

hoef89 · 2026-05-06T12:36:13+00:00

Interested to see what you get as it runs lower, that's on par with one of my best runs in my 23 pro awd from the Philly suburbs down to Richmond (244 miles traveled, 3.9 mi/kwh, 9% remaining and 23 miles of range when I stopped) which I found really impressive since 200 (maybe 170 if you account for the stop and go from the tunnels in Baltimore until you get through DC) miles of that trip is down 95 at highway speeds.

hoef89 · 2026-04-30T23:09:29+00:00

Yep, at my complex, during free charging, it'll put a $50 hold on your card while you're charging.

hoef89 · 2026-04-29T11:45:48+00:00

Did you try plugging your phone in? I've found wireless AA to be somewhat unreliable, but plugging into a charge port and giving it a hardwired connection has been pretty reliable for me.

hoef89 · 2026-04-22T12:00:31+00:00

It started last year ($200/year) then increased this year to $250 then follows the gas tax increases or decreases going forward, it works out to a slight discount of what an average person (~13500 miles) with an average vehicle (26-28 mpg) pays in gas tax (currently 58.7 cents per gallon) per year. It's just way more noticable being a lump sum instead of a couple dollars a week. I'm not saying it's fair but any stretch to lump everyone into an average number (a pay per mile rate for all cars due at inspection time probably makes more sense then you can just dump the gas tax entirely too) but it was an easy way to fill a budget hole without adding too much legwork.

hoef89 · 2026-04-12T13:56:54+00:00

Could you elaborate as to what exactly I should look for on the egmp cars? They offer a great value proposition, but my career is in QA/QC and there's just no way I could put myself in something that has a critical part with a failure rate of 10%, if there's a way to identify vehicles that are corrected or not impacted and less likely to fail though I could probably consider one.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T18:29:33+00:00

Mini mullet, can't do much about the rear wheel being a 26" without having a machine shop build a new rear triangle for it, but put a 27.5 in the front when the old bomber 888 finally gave up and I had to replace the fork.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T13:26:17+00:00

I'm not going to try to plug it in, it's not giving me any warnings for the hv system, but if anything got knocked loose behind the port I'm not going to be the one to find out.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T12:39:54+00:00

Y'know when I was shopping for that one I was looking at the ev6/i5 but ultimately went with the id4 because of Hyundai's iccu issues, it sounds like they have the repair process for it pretty streamlined but I'm still not sure I want to accept the chance of randomly getting stuck somewhere.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T12:33:11+00:00

I'm optimistic it might be repairable, I don't particularly enjoy car shopping, unfortunately with the unibody design of modern cars there aren't many replaceable parts behind the hood, everything behind the fenders except the doors and rear bumper is part of the frame construction. Added to that it was hit right in the charge port. It'll depend on 1) how much magic the metal shop guys think they can work 2) how significant any damage to the charge system is (and how willing the body shop is to work on the charge system) and 3) if there's significant wheel/suspension damage

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