Hardened Steel Pinions?

[RC-Monster Mike]

Nothing would please me more than to sell the gears, Brian - but I won't list them. Drop me an email if you want a couple and we can work it out. Even at the $25 selling price, it is no "get rich" scheme. I had to buy the stainless, buy the clutch bells and have the stainless turned precisely to size, cut the gears and press them together. Cost me about $18 per unit to make! It was a lot of work for $7 and I have sold 20 times more ofna and Kyosho spurs than I ever did the hardened pinions(customers are smart!), which is a better material choice to begin with.

Rene - I used Ofna, HPI and a couple Mugen clutch bells - not the screw on type, though. The teeth are cut off the clutch bell(or the clutch bell cut off the teeth) and pressed with a 14 ton press over a precision turned stainless steel "adapter"(pretty much guarantee it won't spin off the adapter). It looks like a pinion in the end, doesn't weigh a whole lot (steel isn't light, but it is similar in weight to a standard pinion) and is made from a real live clutch bell that was designed to run against a hardened spur. It sounded so good on paper! Just doesn't account for all the User variables out there I guess.

very good info... comming from the world of 1/8 nitro and never having an issue with spurs or clutch bells i was inclined to go with an all steel setup... now i will wait for the sliperential and use the ofna plastic gear and figure out a better way of mounting the motors... anyone though of drilling and tapping the rear endbells of motors to have another point to mount the motor to the chassis... ?

[jhautz]

One question I have is... why does it seem that the pinion is the part that fails in a hard steel pinion and hard steel spur application? I have seen many pictures of gnarled pinions, but never hear that the hard steel spurs were damaged. If it is truely a mesh issue I would think the spurs would be mangled just as much as the pinions.

[BrianG]

Maybe since the pinion has the power behind it?