I have heard lots of bad things about Garmin’s approach to supporting their trainers. I have tried contacting them but they take a long time to come back with a useless answer so I am looking elsewhere for advice.
I discovered the outboard bearing of my Tacx was shot after it started making some pretty strange noises. I’d like to replace it in the hope the noises go away. It seems like i need a bearing puller and a £60 DT Swiss tool. Is this correct? Has anyone documented the process? Is it easy?
As an aside, is there anyone in the UK that has the Dt Swiss tool they could hire out to me so I can do the work? I don’t fancy paying £60 for a tool I’ll only use once.
Sorry I’m late to the party but I have tried all methods to remove the DT Swiss locknut including adding leverage by using the Parktool BBT-9 method. The end result was a bent screw and the locknut won’t budge. Clearly Tacx did not want the locknut removed in my Neo Gen 1.
Coincidentally, I just removed the splined lockring on my Neo 2 today (which is, I think, similar to the original Neo. My lockring was VERY stuck. What worked for me was to stand the flywheel on its side, put the removal tool into the splined lockring, put a long-handled adjustable wrench onto the tool, and then whack the end of the wrench, many times, with a rubber mallet. It definitely took a fair number of whacks (I’d estimate 40 to 50), but it eventually moved enough that I could easily remove it the rest of the way.
Hi Nigel, thanks for sharing your experience. I will definitely try it out. Whacking it numerous times with a hammer isn’t something I thought of so thanks for the tip! I will report back if I am successful. The amount of force required to remove the locknut is absolutely insane. I tried standing the flywheel on its side with a long-handled adjustable wrench onto the DT-swiss tool and further added a hollow steel rod onto the handle of the adjustable wrench to increase leverage. That was how I galled and bent the screw from the method suggested by Werner77. I should have tried hammering it too!
As a word of caution: I was lucky that the screw bent and that I was still able to unscrew it from the flywheel. If the screw head had snapped off completely with the remainder of it being inside the hole, that would have been a major pain in the neck.
You might try heating the flywheel in the area of the lock ring with a heat gun until it’s quite warm to the touch. I couldn’t get the DT-Swiss ratchet out of my hub until I did that.
Thank you so much for sharing your tip. I was initially worried about using a heat gun so close to magnets but I think if I can’t get the locknut out, I may have to try this method. Good to see that Gen 1 Tacx Neo users are still out there and that we’re all still putting it to good use.
The Curie point for neodymium magnets is over 300C, so pretty hot. I only heated the area of my hub around the ratchet until it was very warm to the touch, so certainly less than 80C. There may be adhesives or plastic that might be affected, so best to exercise due caution.
Thank you very much for the tip and the fact on curie point for neodynium magnets. I’ll report back on my progress. Thank you as well, to everyone on this post.
