Well Gang,
All better now. I decided to dissect the little monster and see what I could find. Well, as you can see in the pics, there's obviously two gears. A larger, about 3" inch one which is the "driven" gear and, the smaller one, about 1" which, is the drive gear. In the pic of the driven one, you can see the damage to at least on tooth and, a second one was on it's way to failure too.
Also, if you look close in the pic of the drive gear, you'll see the broken tooth of the driven one, stuck in between two teeth, NOT GOOD! So, using my scientific one celled mind, after a good clean up of all the parts, I noticed that just a tad less than half of that driven gear, IS NOT USED AT ALL, hmmmmmm. The driven gear is, rotatable on the shaft that it sits on, by 180 degrees.
So, I figured what the heck, what have I got to loose?
So, I greased it all up, which by the way was a lot better grease and a lot more of it, compared to the factory el-cheapo grease job they did and, re-assembled it all, with the driven gear rotated 180 to basically an almost full arc of movement, in all BRAND NEW TEETH. It all went together just fine. And, the really good part, I had no parts left over
.
So, I installed back under the door and, ran it through some tests, prior to actually hooking it up to the step. Smoooooooooth as glass. Now, one thing I noticed when I was starting to remove the motor and link assembly from the step, it was exceptionally hard to drive the link pin out between the actuator arm of the drive mechanism and, the two brackets that are on the rotator shaft of the step. Hmmmmm.
And, in doing test runs without hooking it to those two brackets, I noticed it traveled about a 1/4" farther than it would if it were hooked to the step. That meant that, the step limit "out" adjustments were too far in. So, I loosened them up and turned them a bit to increase the travel of the step. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, those adjustments are a "cam" type adjustment. If you turn them, it's like turning a egg, and, you there for increase or, decrease the travel of the step.
So, I turned them in the direction that would increase the step "Out" travel limit. It took quite a bit for the step to move out so that, re-inserting the link pin was not a strain and it would go in semi-easily. So, now the step travels about 3/4" inch farther out but, it still comes to rest in the same spot, when retracting all the way in. So, that adjustment does not effect the retraction stopping point.
So, the question is, how long will it last, who the heck knows?
It sure seems to be smoother and fast that it was previously. But, only time will tell. Anyway, if any one has any questions, I'd be glad to answer if I can.
Scott