DeWalt Transmission questions

[StevenB]

First, I want to thank Dr. Joe, Joe P., and all of the others that orginally figured out how to do this. We're currently trying to use to CIMs with the DeWalt transmission, and have a bunch of questions.
1) We bought the drills whole, and can't get the chuck off of the output shaft. We removed the left-hand screw at the back of the chuck, but the pieces aren't coming apart. How have other teams buying the whole drills done this?
2) Why was it chosen to remove the first stage of the gearing in the CIM design? With an appropriate adapter, would it work to leave the first stage in? Would this going to result in broken gears?
3) Other than weight, is there any reason the tophat is plastic? Will anything that sticks out far enough be sufficient to hold the shifting ring in place?

We're looking at making an adapter to hold the sun gear on the shaft and avoid drilling out the sun gear entirely. Has anyone done this? I'll post a picture soon.
Thanks!