Abnormal gear wear on Savage Flux
 

I was preparing my Flux for a bash get together tomorro when I decided to check the center diff and I was shocked at the wear and tear my gears have taken from just a few runs since buying the flux. Anyone else experience this abnormal wear and tear? I"m on the stock 44/20 gearing setup on 4S and I haven't been abusing the diff, or at least I don't think I am. Anyone have suggestions what I can do, or am I gonna have to upgrade to something even more durable. Is anyone making tougher gear parts yet?

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...x/gearwear.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m.../gearwear2.jpg

IMO the all metal tranny gears need to be lubed. Some have experimented with the various oil additives and have had good results. Seems like putting enough in the tranny case for the teeth of the lower gear to run in would be enough to allow the rotation to coat the upper gears without having too much drag.

I plan to do this with my savage tranny. Just makes sense that steel gears need to have lubrication. Especially seeing that they will be spun pretty fast. Also make note that the upper gear you see the wear on has about 1/3 to 1/4 of the teeth of the gear it meshes with so it will see 3-4times the wear of the larger gear.

Lotta peeps saying you don't want lube/grease on these Savage center diffs. I found out that stupid gear is made from aluminum, no farking wonder its not lasting :whip: Someone said the Savage X has a steel version of this gear, so I need to find it.

Hmm, I have the X tranny that I converted to a flux with p/n 100905. I will pop the top and take a magnet to the top gear to see if it is steel or not.

As far as running metal on metal gears dry... How many of your peeps drain the gear oil out of their car axles to get better performance... Some people are just "ate up with the stupid", my friend used to say that...

Metal on metal gears need some sort of lubrication to cut the friction/heat generated. Plus the sliding action at different rates due to the speed differential between the 2 different sized gears causes a grinding action that wears material away. Having a high pressure lubricant to fill the gaps cannot hurt, save for a little added drag.

Well upon further investigation and research into this problem, I decided to take matters into my own hands, less I start replacing gears all the time. The stock gear is actually STEEL based,HPI #86097. However, it is NOT hardened steel, which would explain why it wore out so fast. http://www.hpiracing.com/products/en/86097/
I checked it out further and you definetely don't want the aluminum gear set from HPI #86136, it'll be worse! http://www.hpiracing.com/products/en/86136/ So my original theory was wrong, the STOCK Savage drive gear is standard STEEL, not hardened STEEL or ALUMINUM.

Lucky for me, my LHS has a replacement 86097 steel drive gear handy so I purchased it along with some HPI Heavy duty grease #Z168 and went about to grease the entire center diff and im gonna see how much that helps my gear wear out. http://www.hpiracing.com/products/en/Z168/

Hopefully someone soon will come out with a HARDENED STEEL version of the drive gear.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...x/difflube.jpg

You can most likely harden it yourself. Just need a decent torch and some oil. I may try heating mine slowly to cherry red and then quenching it in some 30wt oil. I would like to know the actual material that the gear is made from, it may need to be air quenched instead of oil quenched. i still think my oil bath idea is the way to go...

Thank God! My prayers have been answered! I'm picking one of these up as soon as humanely possible! Thank you HPI for listening to your customers!!

http://www.hpiracing.com/press/102514.html

http://www.hpiracing.com/graphics/pa...02514_004p.jpg

Looks like a good mod. I plan to run mine as is with some motor oil (synthetic) and see if that prolongs the life of the gears. How much time (hours) do you think your tranny has on it?

The original drive gear? Uhh, I think 5-6 runs on 4S. I haven't run it yet with this new drive year and grease yet.

good to see that hpi take care of flux guy's...my friend here wait for is flux...he will need this upgrade:yes:

Ya know, you could harden one yourself if you don't want to wait... It's easy if you have the tools.

lincpimp wrote:
"Some have experimented with the various oil additives and have had good results"

I be one of those some, I use STP Oil Treatment.

"I plan to run mine as is with some motor oil (synthetic)"

linc I'd advise against that, unless your trans halves fit together REAL tight... but it's your mess. Also unless you already have synthetic lying around there is no advantage to spending the extra $ over standard oil.

The reason the STP works so well is because it is very viscous, but not draggy. Which means there is no need for a pool at the bottom, just some. Our vehicles get flung around enough so it will disperse evenly. Guaranteed!

That is good to know, I figured the stp would be a bit sticky and cause drag. I planned to seal the lower case halves together with some rtv, and fill it to slightly below the level of the centerline of the lower shaft. I figured synthetic oil would handle the very high rpms better and stick to the gears better than conventional oil. I will give the stp a try, it is only a few bucks, and the shop can cover the cost!

1. Don't have the tools
2. Don't have the patience
3. Don't want to
4. I prefer paying for proven upgrades rather then untested, untrialed self created stuff

The best way to describe it is magnetic.

Leave a bottle open and it will crawl out and climb the walls--

It is hard to describe, like honey, but light and you can even tell that by the weight of the bottle. Stuff works phenomenally well, well enough that I would even consider replacing 90-140 wt in a 1:1 diff for 100% oil treatment. And it makes rebuilds soooooo nice. Yes it's messy, but not grease messy and will wash out with Purple Power/ Simple Green type degreasers at full strength.

I will mention again- do not overdo it!

In my 3906 trans, 3 cc is more than enough, and about 1 cc in the diffs, any more will either simply purge or will create more drag than necessary, which sorta defeats the purpose.

Happy lubin' :lol: