Cracking Sound from Chain

Is it normal for the chain/rear wheel to make a cracking sound, when been rotated by hand, bike on rear stand.

Chain is well lubricated and tensioned correctly, tried search, with no results.

Thanks for any info.

It may be the rotary part of the stand itself. Its possible to lever the rear wheel off the ground on the side stand, get a 2nd person to spin the back wheel while doing this, and see if the noise is still present

yes.

there's some mass, some slack and some friction.

no worries, as long everything else is proper.

I would describe it more of a ticking sound...... that's normal...

If you hear a cracking sound your chain is probably too tight.

Take a quick video and post it. That's my advice. Until we see what's going on it's hard to tell.

whatever you do get it checked out if you cant get a good answer on here...I had my chain break a month ago under acceleration and it gouged my swingarm and passenger peg really bad. im just glad it didn't wrap my leg or get caught up in the front sprocket. everything was in spec on mine as well. just adjusted and lubed the week before.

Assuming the chain is (as you said) tensioned correctly....

If it's up on the rear stand and you s-l-o-w-l-y rotate the wheel by hand listening for this "cracking" sound, do you feel any sort of slight bump/catch/glitch in resistance when you hear this sound?
If you do, is it a distinct tick or click? And is it a regular tick/click as you slowly turn the wheel or is it fairly random in interval?
If it is a distinct ticking sound at regular/close intervals as you turn the wheel *and* you're getting a slight hesitation/catch/resistance with each click, I'd suspect a problem with rear wheel bearing.
Difficult to diagnose just going on the sound description "cracking" without anything else.
As far as tensioning, a too tight chain can make noises that (I suppose
) could be described as "cracking". Make sure you measure tension at tightest point. A chain varies in tension over it's length. Make sure you rotate the wheel and observe chain and measure when it's tightest (apologies if this is too elementary).

Scotrmz said:

Is it normal for the chain/rear wheel to make a cracking sound, when been rotated by hand, bike on rear stand.

Chain is well lubricated and tensioned correctly, tried search, with no results.

Thanks for any info.

Click to expand...

My question is.
Did the cracking sound start to occur after the chain slack was adjusted?
If so, then my money is on the chain being adjusted too tight causing some binding, with the cracking sound occurring periodically at a number of points as the chain moves into its tight spots.

A bit of a light tickety sound is completely normal all around the chain as the wheel rotates, with the tickety sound being muffled(or a bit doey) due to proper lubrication.

On these bikes, there's not much tolerance in the allowable amount of chain slack.
It's always much better to be a little too loose in the chain slack and keep monitoring it every time you clean/lube the chain, than it is to ever be at/near the minimum or let alone just be plain old too tight.

If it's too tight, it will fail prematurely as a result, and also put too much strain on the front sprocket/transmission output shaft and housing, as the suspension compresses more over bumps.

Good News, it was the rear stand that was making the noise. Checked bike by leaning over on side stand, so all good.

Checked rear stand and bearings are slightly out of line, when stand takes weight of bike, the bearings bind.

Thanks for all the help.