Hi all,
New here, bought my Felt Z85 about about a year ago when I moved out to the gorgeous state of Montana. I've been keeping up on my maintenance as much as I can, chain is lubed, rear derailleur is adjusted correctly, but my pulleys are still loud as all heck. They're really annoying me. I haven't put that many miles on the bike and the pulleys are by no means worn out. The derailleur hanger is not bent (as I have the tool to straighten it). I just don't know why it would be making noise, everything looks lined up. At one point a couple of months ago that bike was absolutely silent, there was no noise whatsoever, from anything. Since that point I've taken a fall, but it was on the left side of the bike. And the noise didn't start directly after the fall. The derailleur itself doesn't look bent (and if it was I would have expected the hanger to be worse than it was). From what I can tell, the noise is mostly coming from the upper pulley. When I took it to a LBS to get a flat fixed (free flat repair for life), I asked them about it and they said it "sounded normal". Even my friend's bike sounds similar (albiet mine is a bit louder.) It's driving me crazy, I don't know what would make it go from being silent to sounding like a helicopter.
It's a bit quieter when I'm on the smaller chainring (it's a compact double), but I can still hear it. It's not a grinding noise, I can literally hear the chain engaging the disengaging the top pulley. When I took the pulleys off to clean them they weren't that dirty, but they also don't spin that freely. They will spin for half a second then stop. I don't know if that's normal or not, I mean they are just simple bushings in a plastic piece. I don't expect it to be perfect.
Do you guys have any suggestions for what I can check? Is it normal for the pulleys to make noise?
Thanks in advance.