Best way to remove fisher price pinion???

[JB987]

Anybody out there know the best way to safely remove the 19 tooth pinions on this year's fisher price motors? The pinion remover sold by banebot sure doesn't do the trick!

[nparikh]

I would recommend not using a grinder or saw. We went to the mobile machine shop at Championships last year and they had to use the two because they didn't have a puller.

It did not end very well...

[AJ R]

Try using a nut splitter referred to in this thread about getting the pulley off of the large cim.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52967&highlight=pulley+large+cim

[Josh Murphy]

We use a pin that is slightly smaller than the shaft and then use an arbour press to take it off. It works real well for us, I just did some fisher price motors the other day and had no problems.:)

[jgannon]

You asked for the best way, and Dremeling certainly isn't it, but it works if you're careful. We succeeding in taking off a few pinions this way in 2006.

[Richard McClellan]

I tried using the banebots puller last night as well and after dremelling off some of the pinion teeth just to get it to fit, we tried the puller, and it just bent.

Next I tried using a drill press, and put the banebots puller pin in the chuck, and tried pressing out the shaft and the drill press setup was just not rigid enough.

Finally, I had to take the motors to the machine shop at school and use their arbor press, which did work since it was a more rigid setup.

But, while I was using the drill press method, I accidentally slightly bent the shaft on one of the motors. Anyone have a link or know how to buy more?

[MasterMkanik]

My method is just get a bigger hammer.

[Cory]

Anybody out there know the best way to safely remove the 19 tooth pinions on this year's fisher price motors? The pinion remover sold by banebot sure doesn't do the trick!

Joe,

I too was unhappy to find that the banebots puller is useless, after buying it specifically for that purpose.

We made a plate awhile ago we use to remove it. It's a 1/2" thick aluminum plate, with a slot in it that goes most of the way through the depth of the plate, just wide enough to clear the pinion gear. We then mill a second through slot in the middle of this slot that acts as a clearance hole for the motor shaft.

You can then slide the motor onto the plate, and use an arbor press with any sort of pin to push the pinion off of the motor.

This has worked pretty well for us.

[AdamHeard]

Joe,

I too was unhappy to find that the banebots puller is useless, after buying it specifically for that purpose.

We made a plate awhile ago we use to remove it. It's a 1/2" thick aluminum plate, with a slot in it that goes most of the way through the depth of the plate, just wide enough to clear the pinion gear. We then mill a second through slot in the middle of this slot that acts as a clearance hole for the motor shaft.

You can then slide the motor onto the plate, and use an arbor press with any sort of pin to push the pinion off of the motor.

This has worked pretty well for us.

im having trouble visualizing this..... can you post a picture?

[Richard McClellan]

Joe,

I too was unhappy to find that the banebots puller is useless, after buying it specifically for that purpose.

We made a plate awhile ago we use to remove it. It's a 1/2" thick aluminum plate, with a slot in it that goes most of the way through the depth of the plate, just wide enough to clear the pinion gear. We then mill a second through slot in the middle of this slot that acts as a clearance hole for the motor shaft.

You can then slide the motor onto the plate, and use an arbor press with any sort of pin to push the pinion off of the motor.

This has worked pretty well for us.

How do you fit a 1/2" plate underneath that little pinion? We only have about 3/16" of space or less.

[Cory]

im having trouble visualizing this..... can you post a picture?

I'll go take one right now.

[Travis Covington]

We made a plate a while back, and while pressing off a few FP pinions we bent the 1/2" plate!

We have since used a nut splitter/buster and would never use the pressing method again. The nut splitter works with a vice and and end wrench and snaps it off everytime without damaging the shaft. Can't reuse the pinion though...

You can get these at most hardware stores (Kragen, Napa, autozone, etc)

[Cory]

Ok, these are admittedly horrible pictures, but the lighting on my workbench is terrible.

The first shows the top view. You can see the large slot. The second shows a side view where you can see the second slot going all the way through the plate. It's currently occupied by a zip tie, but you get the point.

[edit] Just saw Travis' post. We too just use a nut buster, unless for some reason we need to reuse the pinion. In which case we use the plate. We also bent/broke the first plate we made.

[JB987]

Thanks for the great ideas, Cory, Travis and others...now if we could just find a source this year for fp motors Team 987 will be in great shape and looking forward to seeing you guys in Atlanta.

[114Klutz]

The easiest way is to simply point a heat gun at the pinion gear. Just pops right off.

[MCahoon]

We use a pin that is slightly smaller than the shaft and then use an arbour press to take it off. It works real well for us, I just did some fisher price motors the other day and had no problems.:)
How do you hold the pinion gear when pressing the gear off?

[MrForbes]

I used a hammer and cold chisel, split the gear in half lengthwise, very quick and easy. Support the gear on a big chunk of solid metal like the anvil part of a bench vice or a heavy welding table, put the chisel in the space between the two topmost teeth, and give it a good whack with a big hammer.

Needless to say the gear will not be useable after this operation.

[Cory]

How do you hold the pinion gear when pressing the gear off?

See my previous post in this thread with the picture of the plate. Best way we've found to hold it.

[Jimmy Cao]

OHHH I just did this yesterday for the first time xD

So... We made a plate that fit on the shaft under the pinion. We cut that little plastic spacer off. A 1/8" Steel plate w/ a slot went right in.

We put another plate in, and used a shop press to press the motor off the pinion.

[Josh Murphy]

How do you hold the pinion gear when pressing the gear off?

We have a fixture that we use. I can post a picture of it tomorrow.

[Mike Hendricks]

OHHH I just did this yesterday for the first time xD

So... We made a plate that fit on the shaft under the pinion. We cut that little plastic spacer off. A 1/8" Steel plate w/ a slot went right in.

We put another plate in, and used a shop press to press the motor off the pinion.

We did the same (with the plate). It was a 1/8" steel plate with a slot cut in it for the motor to slide into. Then we used a hardened nail (don't ask, I have no clue where it came from) and ground it down until it was small enough to touch only the shaft. Then we used an arbor press to press the pinion off.

With that being said, I will join the others who used a nutsplitter - they're wonderful.

[MCahoon]

See my previous post in this thread with the picture of the plate. Best way we've found to hold it.

Cory: I very much appreciated your response in your previous post. It saved me the time that would have been lost in ordering the Banebots puller to find it didn't work (I had it in my cart on their site). I suspect the longer pinion gear is just too much for the hobby puller to handle. We have an arbor press, and your aluminum fixture would be a great solution, but we have to borrow machine shop time and it would likely take a couple of days to get built. The slotted steel plate looks like a workable situation that could be made with basic hand tools, though it doesn't provide as secure a hold on the pinion. Maybe after build season?

Squirrel: Your solution as well as the nut breaker would work. We'll need to do the same thing with an RS550 motor and plan to reuse that pinion, so need to have a way to remove them without destroying them. By nature I am a pack-rat and it seems like somewhere/sometime we'll have a need for a 19 tooth gear (I have boxes of this kind of stuff), so I'll advise not destroyinng it.

Thanks to all for the flurry of responses. I'll offer these as suggestions to the team and let them decide how they want to do it.

Martin :D

[Josh Murphy]

Here are the pictures of what we use to take the fisher price pinions off with. We made this out of aluminum.:)

[MrForbes]

That's a very nice gear puller!

[Richard McClellan]

Here are the pictures of what we use to take the fisher price pinions off with. We made this out of aluminum.:)
Very nice! What's the thickness of the part that goes under the actual pinion? And I assume you guys have an arbor press as well? Or would a drill press work with this tool?

[Josh Murphy]

Very nice! What's the thickness of the part that goes under the actual pinion? And I assume you guys have an arbor press as well? Or would a drill press work with this tool?

We do use an arbor press. A drill press is not a very good option unless it's last resort. The actual part that goes under the pinion is made of steel(unlike what I said earlier) and the rest is made of aluminum(like I said earlier). The actual thickness that goes under the pinion is 0.085". This works really well for us.