Rad_Schuhart

Hello! I am looking for new gearboxes for my tank and I donīt know what to buy. The tank is a Panzer III with loads of added weight, and I use the tank on parks, at the backyard, runing trough mud, water, big slopes and things like that, so I need something strong.





Right now Im running with the upgraded red motors, and so far I've used:
The original pot metal heng long ones, and the sprochets suffered of wear.
The heng long steel ones, the sprochets are OK, but the mounts were weak (They bent) and made a lot of noise.
The asiatam dual speed reduced gearboxes. I had not time of deep testing them, but the problem with this ones is the small size motors.

I was planning to buy the new 4:0 mato steel gearboxes: http://g01.s.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1FHm1H...Xq6xXFXXXp.jpg But some colegues here say they are not good.

So what you recommend me to use, for a reasonable price? I've seen there are some gearboxes for 200-250 bucks, but I see no reason to pay that huge amount of money, so what do you recommend me?

Thanks!

Roboticus_Prime

Taigen V2 gearboxes. They have bearings on every shaft and I use them in all of my tanks. For the pz iii you'll want the 3:1 mid lows with 48mm shaft, if I recall correctly.

My only issue with them is they can be loud, but I'm working on that. I noticed that in my metal hull Sherman, that the steel gearboxes are very quiet. I'm thinking that they are loud in my plastic hulls because they can vibrate.

Those are some sharp looking tanks BTW.

Rad_Schuhart

Hi Roboticus. Yeah, I noticed if I hold the gearboxes on my hand, with full gas are very very quiet, but once I put them in the tank they make a lot of noise. Maybe if we put some of rubber between the gearboxes and the tank we can make them way more quiet.

I'll put an eye on those taigen v2 gearboxes, thanks!

If someone has more ideas Im all eyes.

Roboticus_Prime

Also, if you go the taigen route, be sure to call Erik and tell him you're from RCU. Hell give you a good deal, and top notch customer service.

RichJohnson

The mato gear boxes I got were impressive, steel gears with ball bearings. Geared low so they are about the speed of a stock HL sherman, which is too slow for a sherman. They use 380 motors where the HL uses 280.

The problem I have, is one box, left track, is bad quality control. The gears were not shimmed properly and the gears wobble and therefore chatter verry loudly. The right track gear box is shimmed correct and runs smooth.

The big problem became apparant when I took them apart and inspected. The shaft hole in the gears is larger than then the shaft, and the gear can wobble a litttle on the shaft. Propper side thrust shimming helps reduce this design flaw, as with the smooth performance on the right track box, but the improper stock side shimming on the left track box allowing play cases the gear to wobble around while spinning and actually change its agle on the shaft, so that the gear is spinning not 90deg on the shaft but wobbling on an axis if you understand. Absolute crap. I was very surprised and had I powered them up whe I got them I would have sent it back. It might be a bad QC, but that is just becasue of the poor design of the larger hole in the gears.

Rad_Schuhart

Hi Richard. The problem you have looks like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8lUjw6GEYc Yeah, its a big quality control problem...

RichJohnson

Ho ho ho there you go! Thats exactly the problem, those are mato brass gears with brass bushings, mine are steel gears and bearings, but the same issue. What a dissapointment those gear boxes are. With steel they are raspy and horribly noisey. Cant even here the loud speaker engine noise over the gears.

does any other manufacturer make gear boxes with the same screw hole alignment as the mato ones for the sherman that I could change out and drop mine in the trash?

Imex-Erik

Thanks! Although I must admit I've been a bit sub-par these past two weeks. Xmas really kills us (its a good thing!) and with the new 1/5th trucks here and the 72nd scale tanks I have two new lines to sort as well as the Taigen and all of IMEX lines I also took a bit out of my schedule yesterday to meet Kevin from RCTA who stopped by and demo'd his new ASP and chatted with us for a bit, he is quite a great guy!
Well I'm thinking you should be able to take a piece of paper and mark the holes and then tap out a few new holes for other gearboxes. If you can draw or photo the bottom of the gearbox mount holes with measurements I might be able to help and see

As for the gearboxes we really make some of the best out atm besides the super high end gearboxes. Even still, we have eliminated the horizontal play in the gears, added bearings, and stepped up our QC game. Feel safe knowing if you have a problem Taigen has your back

philipat

I have a set of the Taigen/Asiatam brass gearboxes (5:1) in my PzIII. The lower hull is the metal Taigen/Asiatam lower hull with metal suspension, torsion bars and metal tracks. I haven't tried going up mud hills like that, but I have traversed grass and climbed grass hills. The lawn is using way too long and thick. The stock motors on the flat gearboxes are 280s and too weak. I replaced them with Speed400s. They just barely fit if you bend the power tabs a little outward and offset each motor's tabs. With those motors, it crawls very well and at scale road speeds.

I also have a set of the Mato 4.0 boxes. They come with 380s (same as the stock HL motors). Mine are noisy and the holes are larger than the shaft they spin on, but they have to be. They spin freely on the shafts. That's how they're able to put two gear reductions on the same shaft. I haven't noticed a wobble, but maybe I'll have to look again. I figured it was a function of the metal gearboxes. You could try upgrading the motors.

Note: HL high/low gearboxes will fit in the PzIII. When I bought mine, the stock gearboxes were high/low nylon gearboxes.

philipat

Double post

RichJohnson

What are high low henglong gear boxes. I thought they only had pot metal gears or plastic. At least as far as the Sherman is concerned.

that bad noise from your mato box is likely the same as I have described. Any gear that has its hole moe than a couple thousandths bigger than the shaft will allow the gear to wobble. I have worked on many many gear boxes commercially and in models smaller than ho trains. Clearance is what its all about, and these mato boxes are just junk.
The plastic HL box is actually bettter engineered for the job it is asked to do.

tankme

I just bought the DKLM gearboxes for my Abrams, but they arrived damaged. The metal housing is actually broken where the bearing is seated on the drive shaft. Didn't buy them from DKLM direct so I'm dealing with HobbyRaw to see if they will send me a replacement. The drive shaft is bent too so the gear box took a nice hit in shipping and therefore broke right through the housing. Also the motor PCB cracked.

Roboticus_Prime

That's actually not the first time I have heard that.

tankme

Did it break while using it or from shipping?

philipat

Mato box gives me a 5:1 ratio similar to the flat brass gearboxes and fits in my tank, which the flat box doesn't. So, I guess I'll stay with it.

"High/low" is how the motors mount on the gearboxes. HL has two configurations: high/low and mid/low. High/low is standard on tanks like the Pershing, Tiger and Bulldog. Basically, one motor sits directly above the other one. In the mid/low configuration, one motor is little more forward and lower, almost on the same plane as the lower motor. It was first introduced with the StuG III.

TheBennyB

HL at one time had "black gear" 4 shaft steel gear gearboxes. Have a set or two hunkered away but never got into them if they were actually steel or just blackend pot metal.

Crius

If I were you I'd go back to the asiatam dual ratio GBs and swap out the smaller motors (those are 360s) for 380s. I did that in my Tauchpanzer and she runs great. The one thing I don't like about steel gears is the noise. Brass gears will always run quieter than steel, that's just a given, so I try to pick up the brass GBs wherever I find them, but they're getting very rare. If they still made dual ratio brass gear boxes they would be all I run in my WWII tanks.

Roboticus_Prime

Do you have the steel gears in your Sherman?

Crius

Yes, but they're 3 shaft. I have a set of 4 shaft V2 gearboxes for it, just haven't got around to installation yet. The problem I had with the PzIIIs was that the high/low 4 shaft GBs won't fit in there so you have to use 3 shaft and I didn't like the performance at all. It was way too fast and had very poor low speed performance. Then I put in the brass dual ratio with 380 motors (yes, they fit, just) and it's a thousand times better (IMO). I had the steel dual ratio GBs in it for a minute but I think the steel GBs are just way too loud so I put in the brass, but if I didn't have brass I'd settle for the steel dual ratio with 380s before I'd use a 3 shaft set. But that's just me.

philipat

Those are nice gearboxes. The only downside to the dual-ratio brass boxes is that they don't fit in all WWII with 380-sized motors (380s or Speed400s). I tried that in my PzIV build and the dual-ratio gearboxes only fit with the smaller 360 motors. That's one of the reasons why I'm using the Mato dual-ratio boxes instead in that build. Don't know about the Tiger or Panthers since I don't have either tank. Would be interesting to see if someone got the dual ratio gearboxes with a 380-sized motor in either of them.

Are the 4-shaft high/low gearboxes taller than the 3:1s? Is that why they didn't fit?

Imex-Erik

Yes the brass gearboxes were nice, but I had them discontinued to make some upgrades. They come with 360 motors btw, not 280. The difference is in can length and not diameter. I personally felt them a bit too weak so I decided to add some bearings, change the motors, and gears. ETA is soon, but we do have a few things ahead of them atm.
H/L stands for High/Low, which is the motor mount position. There is also a M/L which is Middle/Low and is commonly found in the Panzer III/IV tanks and similar. The dual ratio gearboxes are L/L (Low/Low) which prevents larger motors from being used due to the motor cans touching in some tanks. Running them in larger tanks will allow a larger motor to be installed. The H/L and M/L also have different bolt patterns on the bottom of the gearboxes too, the M/L has more holes to mount than the H/L. Also yes, the H/L is taller than the M/L, but not by too much.

Roboticus_Prime

The 4 shaft boxes will fit. It just takes some modification. I did it in my M4 90V.

Are the gears loud in your Sherman? The 4 shaft gears are super loud in my Pershing, but they're quiet in the Sherman. I think it has something to do with them being in plastic/metal hulls.

Crius

I have V2 four shaft GBs in my PzIV and it runs great. I got into RC Tanks about the time the brass dual ratio were phased out, so I've only got four sets, but they're definitely far superior to anything else to date (IMO). If I can ever convince Erik to do a run of brass again I'll try to come up with the coin for at least ten sets. Right now I only use them where I can't fit a four shaft GB, but I've already used up all four. One in the PzIII, one in the Stug III, one in the Jagdpanther and one in the S33 Tiger. If I ever really need a set I can go back to four shaft V2s in the S33 Tiger, and I still have a set of the steel dual ratio but they're really loud.

For a minute I thought I had found a fifth set of brass gears out in California but the shop owner wasn't keen on shipping to Detroit so i got a hold of a fellow forum member out there and told him about them. He snapped them up and loves them in a KV-1 or 2, can't remember which, but I was happy to at least see them go to a fellow forum member if I couldn't get them myself.

So if anyone ever finds brass GBs they don't want themselves or if anyone has a used set or sets they don't want I'm always interested, and I pay cash.

philipat

Any pictures? I didn't think they'd fit. Did you try to raise them up to raise the sprockets? Or, keep them on the stock HL posts?

RichJohnson

They way we are describing the gear ratio and shaft number is just lame. The gear boxes are not say 4:1. The motor gear turns way more times around for one complete turn of the drive sprocket. Probably 50 or maybe even 100 to 1 is the real gear ratios we are looking at.

I would like some higher ratio boxes than the mato steel bearing ones I have, also brass would be nice but guess they are gone.
The mato boxes screw into the mato hull from the top down, so the screw heads have to be accessible from the top through the box.
Will the taigen sherman gear boxes allow for screws to be inserted from the top... ok that's a dumb question because it all depends on where the screws go.

I know the Tamiya boxes have super tight clearance between the gears and the bottom plate so don't think they will work for top down screws. But really it seems like I will just have to get gear boxes sent to me and see if I can drill new holes in the bottom in the places I need to insert screws.
Talk about trial and error.

Really though, I would recommend against the MAto steel gear ball bearing boxes due to the total crap that they miss in QC. I should have sent that bad one back but didn't know it was bad until now.