Quote:
Originally Posted by BBray_T1296
This is more of a consumer abuse problem than a defect in the ball shifter. On the end of the output shaft, there is a #10-32 hole to secure whatever gear/sprocket/spacer/etc assembly from falling off the end of the shaft. You put a washer larger than the output and screw it down, covering the end.
What teams who experienced this "falling out" problem were doing, was putting too much "tube length" onto the shaft. I don't know the exact specs of the output shaft, but let's say it is 4". People would put their sprockets on wedged between spacers to keep it in place. Problem was, they put maybe 4.1" worth of stuff onto the shaft. When someone went to screw down the end, they really cranked down on it (like you would expect-who wants their drive sprocket flying off?). This created a reverse gear-puller like device (a gear-pusher I suppose), putting compressive pressure on the spacer/sprocket combo into the gearbox wall, and a tension force on the drive shaft, as the screw was driven deeper. As the screw reached it's last rotation, 0.1" had to come from somewhere as the washer hit the 4" mark. That somewhere was the pressed-in output shaft, causing the complaints you saw.
Lesson is, make your spacers the right length!
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I can attest this was not a user error. Our first set of Ball Shifters it wasn't confirmed as before we could check how long our spacers were our drivebase team had already ripped the system apart.
For the next set we ran through our two regionals we purposely made sure the shaft was not under compression and they still feel out during Champs where we eventually decided to pin them in.
Considering the cost and weight of a ball shifter, pinning the shafts isn't the end of the world because they were more reliable internally compared to the 2011 Super Shifters we had. The encoder mount is pretty flimsy, we took ours off when they started getting sketchy.