Not impressed with RC-M pinions
 

I purchased a 13 tooth RC-M hardened steel pinion gear for my BL Muggy and with only ~3 hours of use on it it started making a strange noise. I looked at the pinion and it's already almost worn out! I plan to flip it over and use the part that doesn't make contact with my spur until I can get my RRP Xtra hard and Novak hardened gears to replace them (going to test and see who's gears last the best). It was a good gear as far as meshing properly and not totally failing on me, but I am disappointed at how quickly it wore out.

Mike must have a different quality pinions now, or a bad batch or something.

I hope he will chime in on this.

So far his pinions never failed me. I have some hardened gears from him that run against steel spurs for more than one year now with hardly any signs of wear.

WOW.. That is a first I’ve heard about anything like that, I have box of his pinions and use them on all 2-8s buggies, trugies, Erevo’s etc and I've never had one issue. Flip Mike a PM, He's great will / should take care of it..

Sorry about that one, Mike will and does us all great.. Don’t lose the faith on one bad thing.. Trust me...

I figured that since it was supposed to be hardened steel it would be fine, I'm not sure what's going on with it. My camera takes poor close-up shots but I'll try to get a picture to show you the obvious wear on the gear.

EDIT: It turns out my cell phone takes better close-ups than my Nikon :lol:
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r...y/9f14c5f1.jpg
It isn't the best picture, but you can clearly see that it is worn out. With the power of my Neu I probably would have stripped that part of the gear off had I finished off the battery pack I was on.

hmmm this is also the first time I heard of it....i dont have lots of experience running metal spur but on my SavageX(nitro) this is the main problem I have with a metal spur.....it eats pinion like it was plastic even the hardened ones....

not that I am imposing but a possibility of misaligned spur/pinion could also cause this...too far too tight....just an idea...

definitely drop Mike a PM he will help you

I haven't had any problems with mine running on 6S. I can't say that about my ESC though :(.

Word of caution - From one day of use my RRP xtra hard is looking very worn and I was debating about buying extras of mikes - LOL

From the blurry pic, it looks like a few teeth were shorn off. This can be caused by improper mesh, or inconsistent mesh. The mesh may be set fine, but if the motor mount flexes when the vehicle lands from jumps or whatever, the weight of the motor may flex the mount causing the mesh to be momentarily skewed. And if you happen to be on power during that time, it can place extra stress on just the tips of the gears.

I haven't had issues with the steel spurs after MANY runs. If you are sure your mesh is set right and consistent, I can only assume it was a bad batch.

That said, keep in mind that a 13T pinion will see 3.5X more wear than the spur. Still, what it is the pic shouldn't happen.

I have one pinion I ran for many months, it shows signs of wear, but the spur (Losi 48t) looks far worse.

I'm using Mike's 15T and just swithced the 17T from my over powered BPP truggy to my MBX5T truggy and they are both still looking good. BTW my MBX5T uses the 48T RRP hardened Savage spur.

Ummm... I think the RRP and the RCM pinions are identicle parts. If one is giving you trouble the other will lily give you trouble too. I have tried one novak 1/8 pinion and it did wear on me after only a few race days so I dont think they are even as hard as the RCM and RRP gears. I have never had an issue with the RCM or RRP pinions. Sounds to me like there may some setup issues that needs to be looked at. Is the motor mount bent or anyhting that could cause the gear mesh to not run perfectly true. Or possible something flexing on hard landings that causes gear mesh issues. This was the only time I ever wore a RCM hardened pinion. My motor mount screws poped the heads off and the centerdiff mount and motor mount was loose and causing all kinds of flex. When I noticed the problem after the run I also saw that I wore the pinion gear pretty good from the mesh flexing around.


EDIT: All that said, The smaller pinion gears like the 12 and 13T will have more trouble than the larger gears. On the smaller gears the angle of the teeth is greeater and the mesh is less ideal and can cause additiona stress and wear.

Jeff - Very true in my case - The motor shifted in the middle of a race, I didn't want to stop so kept running for a lap with a very bad mesh for a lap until it finally didn't mesh at all. Once the race blood is flowing difficult to stop for anything... I figured my wear was mostly due to this...

All the teeth are still intact and wearing evenly. It does make sense that the smaller pinion gets more wear, but I'm kinda limited with what I can use. I'm currently using a Neu 1515 1.5D and the 13T is perfect for my bashing style (15T in this truck would probably be closer to optimal, but I push the throttle pretty hard when the going gets rough and it gets hot). I've got my motor mount in there pretty tight and there is no flex to it, though I do land jumps on the throttle. I know it's hard on things but I'm still inexperienced with jumping my Muggy and if I don't throttle it I end up nose-diving.

So you guys think I should order another RC-M hardened gear and try my luck again? My mesh was slightly loose, but not bad enough that the gear would slip out--the mesh was set just loose enough to keep from frying my ESC.

I like a mesh that is slightly on the loose side too. Another option for you would be to try the 15T gear and just add some punch control into the esc programaing to compensate for the extra amp draw. to llimit the acceleration to feel like what you are getting on the 13T. Just an idea.

I would say if you cant make it work with the RCM gfear, you wont hve any better luck with the others.

so far i have had great luck with mikes pinions

i remember there were a few batches of bad ones. some broke off when the set screw was tightened. I've had one wear out fast. just call mike and get another. Just think how lucky you are getting the only bad one left out of thousands.LOL!

I haven't had any issues with Mike's pinions running against a steel spur. More often that not it is user error in setting up the mesh. I aim for the slightest bit of play, usually the plastic package the gears come in between the gears. Haven't had any issues since I started doing this, except on my nitro REVO when I had it and that was due to a broken motor mount.

Definitely a bad gear. Either it didn't get hardened (and was too soft) or it was hardened to much (and was too brittle). I own a bunch of Mike's pinions also and I have no complaints at all. Another variable that comes to mind is that most steel spurs I've seen are only half the width of a plastic spur, probably to keep weight down. But this also increases the stress on the area of the pinion that is meshing with it. With a spur being roughly half the width of the pinion, you could say that "3.5X wear" figure is more like 7X more wear on the pinion.

OK. I'll drop him a PM about the gear and see what happens. I'm sure the mesh is right, and the mount is screwed in plenty tight (and thread locked in). Most likely just wasn't hardened right and it wore out. Currently it's on the opposite way it used to be, the pinion is much wider than the spur so I had room to spare.

I use the rcm 17t on a RRP 47t spur (8T) and have no issues, (not to mention the 10 32ps i use from RCM.. Mike had a shipment hardened wrong or somthing awhile ago, made good to everyone. New purchase of yours or had it in the tackle box awhile ?

I ordered it a few weeks ago, possibly even a month ago, I don't remember exactly when.

I always put a thin splash of graphite with molybendum (sp?) on the metal to metal gears as it quiets them a bit and I hopes make them wear easier.

This is similar, the one I use is in a red tube though a dry lube, guys here use honda 21 moly/graphite. Im not all pro lol Im sure a search in here would find the honda stuff or something better. http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXKR89&P=7

i use mikes and rrp pinions. they look identical to me, except the rrp have the number of teeth stamped on it.

You could wait for castle to come out with their titanium coated ones :)

So that's how you tell the difference :lol: I have a 20T RRP and a 24T RC-M pinion sitting here and there really is no difference. For the record, I did run the 20T (old gear from my Revo that I don't need anymore) in the Muggy for a while and the only actual wear on it is it's shiny on the part that made contact with the spur.

No thanks....I'd like to run my truck again this year :lol: Maybe in 2-3 years when they are actually available I'll try one out (I hear it just makes the gears more quiet though, it doesn't actually wear better).

I ran it today with the gear reversed and it's working fine...for now. Until Mike gets back to me about my pinion I'll just stick with what I've got until it wears out the other part. I broke a "spindle" today on the Muggy (I call it an axle carrier, but they call it a spindle) so I'm out of action until next week anyway :cry:

I was assuming titanium coated = titanium nitride coated. I cant make that stuff wear off my shock shafts with any grade of stone or sandpaper I had on hand, thats the hardest wearing stuff I've ever seen :P

I have some shock shafts that are coated in it but they haven't seen enough use to really tell. I just heard that TiNi was mostly to quiet the gear noise but if it makes it harder to wear out that's sweet. Maybe they'll send me a prototype :smile: I'm good at breaking things that aren't supposed to be broken, when someone tells me something is indestructible I take it as a challenge :lol:

I got a butt load of mikes pinions and have used them many times under hard use with steel spurs and they are as bullet proof a gear as your gonna find.

It is very rare to have a pinion wear out like you describe - in fact we have seen about 5 or 6 pinions with issues in the last couple years since we started selling them (so less than 10 bad gears in about 10000 sold) - as a rule, the gears are rock solid. Nothing is exempt from the occasional error, though - send your worn out gear back and we will replace it. Simple as that. I don't think you will find a better gear, though.

Well, it's settled. I'm shipping it back soon and we'll see what Mike comes up with. 5 or 6 gears out of 10,000 is a pretty good track record! Looks like the new pinion for my 2.5D and the pinion I'll probably need in my Hyper will be RC-M.

Got my replacement pinion today. Thanks Mike!!! Too bad I screwed up my motor and can't test it :diablo: Hopefully it will hold up.