I took the advice of Richard L. in the FAQ thread and broke in my metal gearboxes. I was very surprised on how poorly the gears meshed in advance, and was very disappointed to see that the tophat bushings were loose in the chassis in several instances. I JB Welded the bushings in place in advance, then got to work.

Once the bushings were not spinning instead of the shaft, I found the gears had several binds and tight spots when turning them by hand. I degreased, starting with foaming engine degreaser, finishing with Simple Green and hot water. As I did not have any valve lapping compound (ok, I could not find my lapping compound- we moved from a house with a big two car garage to a house without any garage), so I used paint buffing compound. My advise is to use something that is easily removed with the cleaning system you have. My rubbing compound was water soluble and was still a royal pain to get off. I started with 15 minutes each way at low speed with a hand drill (I felt my press was running too fast even at the slowest speed). I cleaned the compound out and reoiled the bushings and tested. They were better, but not yet where they could spin freely. So, back on with the rubbing compound and another 15 minutes each way on each gearbox. This time after cleaning them and reoiling the bushings, they actually spun free after giving the output shaft a spin. I am so impressed! I greased them up wit ha very light grease and away they go.

While I had the drive disassembled, I broke in the motors as well as Richard L. also recommended. I did not want to desolder the motors and break in on the bench though. I just ran them sitting in the tank base free at the lowest speed I could with the trim tab. I ran them an hour, half one way and half the other. I don't know if they will run any better but I feel confident that I did what I could.

As I used a light grease, I know there will be a mess. So, I used some light gauge lexan I had kicking around to build wrap-around splash guards. I'll add a pic or two at the end so you all can see. I held them in place by putting the front and rear screw in thru them underneath. It was a real pain to work around them to screw the drives down but I believe it is worth the extra aggrivation. Oh, and you can see that I have trimmed the smoke tubes as suggested- they stuck out and looked butt-ugly!

Last thing to do for now is to install a tiny laptop fan I have. I'll need to drop the voltage- it runs on 5 volts, so I'll need to dig up a 50 ohm resistor to knock off 2.5 volts. BTW I have a TK-RX 13 receiver board- anything I need to watch out for, or should I just order a RX14 board right away? It should last a while with the fan cooling the heatsink, but is there any significant difference between the two?

I love my Pershing!


Dmon1996