Stage 2: The Gearboxes

Again you are told to grease the gears with no mention of anything else. I would also grease or oil the drive shafts and bushings as well.Before using thread lock on the grub screws for the 3 out-drives check you are happy the whole thing operates smoothly. The thread lock works very well and it is extremely hard to get the grubs screws out once the thread lock has done its work. A mistake I made was applying the thread lock to the hole rather than the grub screw, doing this runs the risk of excess thread lock gluing the out drive to the shaft making dis-assembly even harder.

Check the operation of the complete assembly using a cordless drill on the input shaft. I have to say on my first assembly attempt the shafts did not run smoothly at all wobbling all over the place. On dis-assembly the grease in the gear box showed signs of metallic wear. The problem seems to have been caused by the gear on the gearbox input shaft (the instructions call all the shafts output shafts but in reality one of them is an input shaft) not being true on the shaft. Holding the shaft in a soft jawed vice and tapping the gear with a small hammer did improving things although it is still not perfect.

The gears themselves seem to be a die-cast alloy and in all honesty I do not expect them to last that long. It is possible to buy steel gears but I think the alloy ones will last long enough in order to enable you to decide whether or not driving an RC Buggy is something you would want to persist with.