Originally Posted by
SoSmellyAir
Koyote and
mstateglfr I thought a cup and cone bearing system has loose ball bearings so if someone inexperienced (like me) opens one up, the ball bearings would just fall out, roll away, and some of them would disappear forever? To me, the advantage of the DT Swiss 350 hub is that there are detailed instructions for both its assembly and disassembly, and if I somehow mess up the cartridge bearings during maintenance (which seems quite a bit harder to do so compared to a cup and cone setup), replacements and/or upgrades are readily available at reasonable costs. Not to mention there is no preload to adjust.
It would actually be kind of hard to lose the ball bearings from a hub like that… And even if you did, no matter: if you’re going to it open up to service it, it’s best to just replace them anyway. And those common sizes are readily available at any bike shop or on Amazon.
It sounds like you probably don’t have experience with that sort of maintenance, which is understandable, since such hubs are becoming rarer nowadays. It’s not difficult to learn, and you’d only need a couple of new tools, most likely. But I do prefer cartridge bearing hubs, because they just don’t need maintenance very often; and when they do, you just chick out the cartridge and stick in a new one.