I've been having an intermittent drivetrain issue on my Forbidden Druid. I finally captured the mysterious "pop" on video by strapping a GoPro to a seatpost-mounted gooseneck yesterday.
One of my earlier hypotheses was that the (somewhat finicky) high-pivot/idler drivetrain might be derailing the chain toward the high side (small cogs) of the cassette. But in the video, the derailleur appears to be in line, and the pedal just moves *forward through* the ratchet in a way that shouldn't be possible.
This has made me really suspicious that the issue is in the rear hub ratchet itself.
The hub is a DT Swiss 240 DEG (their newer high-engagement model). It’s supposed to have solid, quick engagement (~4°), but the engagement *feels* vague or inconsistent on this bike.
Would love to hear from anyone with experience on this hub or similar issues — trying to figure out if this is a warrantyable defect or something I can fix myself. I plan to bring it into a shop soon, but wanted to query the hivemind first 🍯
DT Swiss 240 DEG hub "pop" on Forbidden Druid — drivetrain or ratchet issue?
byu/mhueschen inMTB
by mhueschen
3 Comments
I say rachet. I’ve heard that noise many times, I believe is was the rachet getting ready to blow up, or starting to have issues.
It sounds like the rachet is ‘skipping’ over its surface which can happen when they’re new because they regularly come with too much grease which makes the faces stick together and require some force to break the surface tension then skip over some teeth until they bite again – it sounds a lot like this.
High engagement DT rachets are reallllly sensitive to how much grease is between them.
Pull the star rachet out, clean ALL the grease off and use some degreaser to get in there. Put a tiny dab of the DT ‘special grease’ (should be red & clay-like) – I’m talking the rachet surface should be barely dusted with grease and see if it happens again. These run best pretty ‘dry’ imo
FWIW, I actually brought the Druid to a shop back in October when this first started happening — they checked the hub and said it looked fine, so I focused on the drivetrain. Spent months tweaking things (idler alignment, chainline, etc.) thinking it was a derailleur/cassette issue. Feels wild to see this pop so clearly now and realize the hub was likely the culprit the whole time… I was starting to demo bikes and on the cusp of shelving the frame… Feels like I’ve been gaslit by a DT Swiss hub for six months while nearly throwing out my favorite bike.
This is my villain origin story 🙃