How to silence freehub on DT Swiss Spline wheels?

Question

I just finished building a new gravel/commuting bike. For this build, I have bought a pair of DT Swiss Spline C 1800.

However as I switched from an early 80's Peugeot bike to this new gravel, I noticed the big noise made by the ratchet when coasting.

Discretion is very important to me, especially because I really enjoy to hear the nature around me when off-road.

My Peugeot bike is equipped with a road pair of Bontrager that are totally silent. The sound of the rubber of my tires are much louder than the freehub!

What do you suggest to make this less noisy? Changing the wheels? Changing the freehub? Do you have any references? I'm not really fond of the grease fix as it is not a permanent fix.

Cheers!

Answer 1

For the most part you've bought the wrong hub for your stated priorities. You might be able to bring down the noise a bit by running a more viscous lubricant inside the freehub body or a greater quantity of it, but don't expect a huge difference. There's also a limit to how much you can push that before possibly creating problems with the hub's engagement.

Switching freehub bodies on the same wheelset isn't a solution here. All the other DT 3-pawl freehub bodies that could plug in will be the same thing.

As others have pointed out, you can change the 370 hub to the DT ratchet system. I'm personally a little ambivalent that doing this to address noise is a solution. Note that there's two components to hub noise: the frequency of engagement and how loud the individual clicks are. I have an old 18 POE DT 240 hub and I would classify it as loud enough to bug someone that's out to get a quiet experience riding in nature.

If you want quiet you basically have a choice between the high-end quiet/silent ones (Onyx, True Precision) and much lower end hubs with weaker engagement springs and lower point of enagement numbers.

Answer 2

The hubs in your wheels are DT Swiss 370 using an 3 pawl system. It is possible to upgrade the 3 pawl hub to the star ratchet system. The 18 tooth ratchet is pretty quiet.

Here is the official tutorial from DT Swiss on how to do it:

Answer 3

I would assume that these hubs use DT Swiss’ star-ratchet engagement system.

From research, ensuring they are greased is the ONLY method I am have come across. Many sources recommend not over-greasing the star ratchet engagement faces for fear that it may affect the actual engagement, but others have been able load up some additional grease and still avoid this issue while providing some additional quieting. Regardless, it would be prudent to use the actual star ratchet grease, or a suitable substitute.

One other area you may play with is the number of engagement points your star ratchet system has. Many stock DT Swiss hubs come with 18-tooth star ratchets. However, You can swap these out for 24, 36, and even 54-tooth versions as well. You can easily determine what the tooth count of your current star ratchets are by counting the number of clicks your cassette makes in one complete turn of the freehub. The different number of engagement points per rotation will definitely change the pitch you hear, and possibly the volume. The audible harmonics of your wheel could influence this as well, but I believe that is mostly wishful thinking. The 18’s are more of a click whereas the 54’s will be more of a buzz. They are pricey, however, roughly $100 a set, so I would see if you could try a set from a buddy and ensuring that the pitch changes more to your liking before committing to a purchase.

A bonus for the higher number of engagement teeth is that there is less of a dead/flat spot before the freewheel engages (I swapped out for some 36 tooth star ratchets for the road and gravel steeds, and like the quicker engagement there, and I am not as sensitive to the noise as you are, but I cannot claim that they are loud nor silent). Wish I had a more definitive solution.