[BrendanB]

Overall I was impressed considering I was very disappointed by some of the quality from last year in the two-CIM ball shifters and Versa Wheels.

After weighing the pros and cons with our mechanical team we decided to go with the 3 CIM Ball Shifters after discussing what the failures were from last year and how we could prevent them. We narrowed it down to three areas all of which had fixes. To combat our biggest issue from the year with the output shafts falling out (including the replacements) we immediately pinned the shafts this year as a precaution. The second was the odd design of the encoder standoffs having the screws on the inside of the shifter housing. Last year we had a few on the inside come loose and destroyed our encoders. We put some Loctite on these bolts and made sure they were nice and snug before assembly. The last part was swapping for the updated encoder gears after the original press fit ones came loose. We replaced these gears in week 6 but the original two mods were done in minutes during assembly. Overall they were the most reliable shifting gearboxes we have used in four seasons and they lasted through our longest competition season of the year running in 5 competitions and hours of practice without failure.

My only suggestion would be to revisit the mounting of the encoder to eliminate the interior bolts on the standoffs because you can't tighten them without ripping the whole thing apart.

We were very satisfied with the other products we used and the only issues we had were with our VersaPlanetary gearboxes but they weren't assembled correctly the first time around which was our fault.