How the ‘heck’ do you remove a DT Swiss hub ratchet ring?

The ‘stick a breaker bar under a shelf and the rotate the wheel’ technique doesn’t make sense in my pea-brain. Sure it doesn’t matter if the bar is 10cm or 10 miles long, if you are rotating the wheel rather than the bar?

A load of heat on the hub shell, token blast of cold air on the drive ring to try and quickly cool it down, a vice that doesn’t rotate, and two people swinging on the wheel with a tyre on it has never failed me (including Roval wheels used with Levo demo bikes), but it’s been really close on a couple for sure.

Boiling water will not make enough thermal difference to have any meaningful effect.

It will. Just need to be quick. IIRC it’s a steel ring and aluminium body, wrap the end of body in some strips of towel (around the outside of the thread) and pour on an entire kettle full of boiling water. Only needs to change the thread from bastid tight to jesus that’s a struggle to undo.

I’ve done it a few times.

Or…. just send it into the DT service centre and make it their problem.

As said above that bearing only needs doing once in a blue moon.

I have just had the joy of doing this to my 18 month old 240 exp’s

Nothing worked at home. Heat, off the shelf penetrant, tool in a vice (trashed a pattern tool), snapped a 3/8” breaker bar, etc.

In the end I gave up and took it to work (we overhaul gas turbines).

It got a good soaking in Ardrox penetrant.

Battery powered impact driver with maybe 250Nm, nothing.

Air powered impact driver with 773Nm, nothing.

6 foot pole and one of the fitter hanging off it, nothing.

It finally broke free with the tool in a big vice and three of us turning the wheel.

For future readers of this thread the ratchet ring can be either steel or aluminium. Heat not going to help as much if you have the alloy version.