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Our "Rider Review" article series features the honest reviews from verified purchasers of Worldwide Cyclery. They contain the photos, thoughts, feedback & overall review you are looking for.
If you spent your hard earned money on a set of nice hubs eventually they will need to be serviced to keep them running smoothly. the great thing is most high end hubs can be serviced at home. Our valued customer Kenneth shares his experienced using the DT Swiss Hub Tool Kit Set for 180/190/240/350/440 Hubs. Check it out!
I do not possess any real talent as a mechanic, nor have I had much training. I worked in a bike shop as a kid and ever since have done most of the maintenance on my road and mountain bikes. I wouldn’t want anyone reading this review of the DT Swiss Hub Tool Kit for 180/190/240/350/440 Hubs to be intimidated based on his or her lack of experience in working on wheels or hubs. My father was a carpenter and always emphasized that I should use the ‘right tool’ for the job. The DT Swiss Hub Tool Kit is definitely the right tool for the job of servicing your own hubs! Not only is every tool you could possibly need included in the set, but their online instructional videos are very detailed and easy to comprehend. They are hosted online at YouTube and a brief search there or on the DT Swiss website will yield you fast results.
While not exactly cheap, I have 4 bikes (one road, one gravel & two mountain) that all have DT Swiss 240 hubs, so ordering the hub tool kit made a lot of sense for me. I also ride a lot (to me anyway) of miles and am on the Clydesdale side at 6’2” & 185 pounds. I also like my equipment to work as intended so I tend to do a lot of maintenance on all my bicycles. The main piece of advice that I will give to anyone who decides to invest in this kit is to take a good, hard look at that old, crusty vice you inherited from your granddad. For the first (and probably only) time in my life, I broke a vice while trying to remove the internal ring nut from my 4-year-old set of 29er wheels. As explained in the DT Swiss video by their technician, the internal ring nut tightens over time with pedaling forces and can be difficult to loosen (often requiring the assistance of another person!). So, if you plan on purchasing a quality bearing tool service set, do the right thing and upgrade your bench vice to a nice solid model from your local hardware store.
The tools themselves are well made and machined to very tight tolerances.
The one thing that could be improved would be better labeling of the drifts & their sizing. As it is, you kind of have to figure out which driver is best for the job by a little trial & error but this is only a very minor complaint. I was surprised to see that the set included a Park Tool AV-1 axle vice to help with end cap removal as well as two small containers of DT Swiss’ proprietary grease. I admit that I probably didn’t look very closely at the listing on the Worldwide Cyclery website because now that I look, they are shown right there. Still not certain what the synthetic leather-like strap is for…
I have now used the kit on three of my hub sets for general maintenance and can recommend it without reservation. Everything works exactly as it should and with the online videos, I had great confidence that I was not going to ruin my really expensive wheels. As I stated before, make sure you have a quality bench vice from the start because those ring nuts get really, really tight.
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