Bent ring gear

[ik632]

I have a kit Wraith that I purchased from a user who put it together and ran it once or twice and decided to stick with an SCX. Anyway, I'm going through it and it seems that the rear axle has a bent ring gear. It's weird, if you take the cover off you can see that as it rotates through one cycle of the rear axle the ring wobbles back and forth. I pulled it out and pulled it off and it seemed to be flat.

I noticed at first because the rear end was really noisy. I'm wondering if maybe the pinion needs shimming or something. Anyone run into this before? I've pretty much pulled the entire rear axle apart and rebuilt it but I must be missing something or have a bad part.

[k7zpj]

It could be a warped axle housing. Do you know if this is the original gears? Any time you damage the ring gear or pinion you should replace the axle housing.

The other thing to check is to see if the diff case is warped out of shape.

[Harley]

Likely the gear seating poorly on the locker.

[ik632]

Thanks guys. I think a full tear-down is in order this weekend. I guess it's just time to do it right. Prior owner stripped one of the bearing cap screw holes so I will have to fix that too.

[dirk379]

I've also noticed funky things happen if/when you over tighten the plastic bearing cap retainers. It doesn't seem to be as much of an issue with the alum caps, but i built a spare set of axles the other night and kept over tightening those and it wouldn't want to spin freely at all. Might be something else to check out.

[BENDER]

Originally Posted by Harley

Likely the gear seating poorly on the locker.

x2.

Unbolt the ring gear from the plastic locker housing and re-assemble it. Make sure you evenly tighten the ring gear down in a criss-cross pattern like you would the lug nuts on a 1:1 wheel. It should run true after that.

[ik632]

Thanks again guys. I'm finding I probably should have just torn the entire thing apart when I got it then assembled it on my own. I've more or less done that 2x by now and could have saved some time. I think it's one of my slowest builds evaaaaaaaar.