After about a 25 year hiatus, I have been newly reaquainted with the hobby. I have been shredding the pinion gears on my out-of-the-box Super G+ cars. I have noticed that there are different materials available for pinion and crown gears. I've seen nylatron, delrin, and polymer. Does anyone out there know about the pros and cons of the different compositions? What do most people use? What is the expected life on these gears? Is it normal for the stock gears to wear out after only a couple hundred or so laps?
Thanks,
Pete

I also was wondering if there was any HO slotcar people near the Cleveland, Ohio area?

PTO---- you really should get much more life out of your gears. Is there any pattern to your gear problems? I'm going to put you in touch with Mike Shanks who is in your area. He would be a great contact for you. He can answer all your questions and help to get you involved in the racing in the area. By the way the Clevland area has many ho racers. Here is Mike's telephone numbers. 1-440-336-2111 or 1-44o-284-4994

From the BSRT web-site:
BSRT offers gears in three different materials; Nylatron, Delrin, and Poly. The Nylatron plastic material was originally developed as a gear material and has a natural lubricant mixed into the material. These gears work best with BSRT G-Jets up through Super Stock cars (ceramic magnets). Delrin is a tough plastic material which shrinks more than other gear materials. This allows you to potentially use a larger crown gear for the same application since it will have more clearance off the track surface. We recommend delrin gears be used with ceramic material magnet cars such as Super Stock and Ceramic Modified cars. BSRT's Poly gears are super tough glass-filled gears designed for use with higher energy magnet cars. These would include any cars using Polymer or Neo magnets.

Please keep us posted as to what you find out. thx mj

I'm curious how the stock gears are getting chewed up. What kind of layout you racing on, Pete? What kind of track and power supply? Are these the new SG+ cars with the grayish chassis or the older black ones?

I have a L-shaped table, 4' off the wall, 12' x 10' long. I am just starting this build. It is a tomy track with tomy wall-wart power supplys, one per lane. I use stock controlers. The power supply and track layout are temporary, until I run permanent power to the track. 4 lanes curently set up basically like Monza F1 course, kind of a modified kidnee bean shape, maybe 50' long(I've been trying to settle in on a permanent configuration). Racing is counterclockwise. Right now it is set up as a very fast track with no slower areas, just to have some high speed fun. The chassis are black. The crown gear shows no wear. The teeth on the crown gear appear to be pointy and quite sharp. After a while, the area of the pinion that meshes with the crown begins to get beat up. It slowly gets worse until the teeth on the pinion, where the crown interfaces, are reduced to a grove. Then, the motor spins, but transfers no power to the wheels. I do clean, then lubricate with some light oil. This seems to be hapening on all four cars. What type of replacement gears should I look for?

Call Mike Shanks, He can help you. He has many different gears you can try.

I've seen this happen due to sloppy gear mesh between the pinion & crown gears. Loose is fast, but it will kill the stock gears. I used to participate in a prepped stock G+ class in which I couldn't add spacers to the axle to help set the mesh, and I had to replace pinion gears all the time on some cars. After you replace the pinion gear a few times, the crown gear will require replacing, too. The club now allows axle spacers, so I can fine tune the gear mesh. Gear life is now improved.

I've seen this happen due to sloppy gear mesh and I had to replace pinion gears all the time on some cars. After you replace the pinion gear a few times, the crown gear will require replacing, too.
Just curious Mach5 did you find this to be a consistant issue with the stock cars as he seems to be having trouble with all his cars with about 100 laps or so? mj

My impression was that newer cars were somewhat worse in this regard. I normally tried to buy the older cars anyway, as they came with stronger 2-dot traction magnets.

Thanks for the info.