[PMGRACER]

This year I used absolutely no lapping compound in our gear boxes. Last year we had to, because we didn't use great care to make sure the gears were meshing squarly. This year, I made a fixture that holds the gears true so I could bore a hole to bush them. I made sure the mounting locations were within .0002. Putting the gear set together yeilded the desired results -extremely smooth power transmission. I have about 50 hours into the entire fabrication of the gear boxes this year. Believe it or not, most of the time was spent "tweaking" a little here and a smiggin there. To make every thing work as smoothly as possible, youu need to spend ttime finding where all the little binding spots are. Ultimatly we are trying to utilize as much output we can from the motors. Any friction is wasted power.

The best advice i can give, makee sure that your gears have bores that are absolutly true to the pitch dia. and your centers are held as close as possible. We used Pic Stainless Steel gears, which have a very smooth tooth profile. White lithium grease is all you need as long as your machining is held to a high tolerance.