Tandem Cycling - bottom bracket care

How often do you service this part of your tandem. While replacing ours w/ Chris King's, which are very nice, I noticed rust forming in this area. Did a half arse clean job and applied liberal amounts of grease down there. We ride in the rain, and have though of sealing the area at the top of the seat tube. Should I use grease?

I just serviced our BBs for the first time after owning the tandem for 15 months and riding in various conditions. I removed both BBs and eccentric BB, cleaned the frame and BBs, put grease on the outside of the EBB, and loctite on the BB threads before re-installing. At the same time, I cleaned and re-greased the headset bearings. I tried to also do our DT Hugi rear hub, but discovered that special tools are required to take it apart and put it back together, and so left it alone.

I did a bit of rework to allow me to easily remove the BB bearings, open them, clean, inspect and regrease them. So far this has been huge in getting any life out of them. Our setup is ISIS, so I normally pull all the cranks and degrease the entire driveline (cranks, chainrings, cassette, chains) when I wash the bike.

As for our DT hubs, I have not repacked those bearings. However, I will remove and maintain the drive rings normally every other cleaning mentioned above.

Not sure which special tools you are referring to. If it is the axle block (and vice to make the axle block work), as a substitute, you should find that using an old drill chuck and key, secured but not crazy tight on the stub axle, will provide a nice portable handle to remove the stub axle. As mentioned, tight enough to grip and remove the stub, but not so tight to destroy it. Once removed the entire drive body will slide off.

PK

I read the manual linked to from this page (http://www.dtswiss.com/Service/PRODUCT-DOCUMENTS.aspx) for the DT Hugi TD hubs. That listed several specialized tools that I don't have, and even some special grease. I've overhauled several other hubs, so if there is a way to do it without all of these tools then I'd be happy to hear more about it.