Grease for DT Swiss Ratchet hubs

[Melch]

Does anyone have any experience servicing DT swiss splined hubs, What grease do you when servicing and any suggestions as to who would stock the special DT-Swiss grease, I stay in cape town.

Read on for more information if you want but not essential

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I recently bought a DT Swiss X1600 wheelset second hand, it looks in very good condition. It uses the ratchet hub. Anyway when I reinserted the QR it pushed the freehub body off the hub and the internal components fell out landing on the floor. I was very surprised to see how little force it took to do this. I had not opened one before so took a bit of fiddling to get everything back together properly. However, by the time I had put the system back together correctly most of the grease had rubbed off the ratchet system.

The free hub spins freely when not mounted on the bike but any clamping force from the QR causes the free hub to stiffen up to the point that the chain goes completely slack when spinning the wheel. I am hoping I just need to re-grease the internals to sort this out.

DT swiss recommend you use their special, very pricey "grease", on the ratchet hubs. I have done a bit of research and know normal grease is to tacky to work. There are a couple of options for alternatives, most involve thinning down cheaper greases that is more readily available. Or you can buy the stuff DT Swiss uses by the liter for the same price you pay for 20 g but that seems a bit of an overkill as 20 g of the stuff lasts people quite a while. Just wondering what people use.

[mitsu]

Check that the rubber seal is in properly. Same thing happened to me. Take a small screwdriver and gently help seal into position as you push freehub into place.

 

I used general purpose car grease.