Power Seat Eats Replacement Gears (2 Viewers)

[nakman]

the gears were never claimed to be as good as the factory ones, but given that they've worked for easily 95% of the cases that's still pretty good. Sucks to be the 5% though, I get it, and I'm sorry to the few who are having problems with this. I have actually pulled the remaining gears I have because of this issue, and have invested in the tooling required to produce injection molded thermoplastic gears, in a material that's going to be much closer than the stock ones. I'm confident these new gears will work better than the current replacements, there are too many other factors to guarantee they'd work 100% though, as have been pointed out above. They'll continue to be the cheap fix, and hopefully reduce the failure rate for the few who struggle with this.

profro and midMO450, if you guys want to take the time to try this again, I'll send you a set of the new gears as soon as I have them, hopefully 2-3 weeks out now. sorry these aren't perfect guys. dig the Cooter avatar btw.

 

[nemoblackdog]

No actual criticism from me on your replacement gears - and I am grateful folks like you are around to provide fixes. My beef is with the actual Toyota design. There were plenty of solid motorized seat mechanisms out there prior to the early '90s that Toyota could've used as a model. After looking at the failure mechanism on these seats, some aspects were clearly under-designed.

I don't buy the argument some have put forth that the nylon gears are the "fuse" - if that were really the case it would be much simpler to replace them when they "blew". The whole mechanism is sort of a rube goldberg design anyway - way too complex for the job at hand.

 

[sky90]

Mine pop a cap and got stucked on the left rail.

Couldn't find the damn cap so used a m14 bolt IIRC, for replacement. Drilled the bolt to centerize the shaft, greased and 3-4 turns back from 'tight' and voila!

Yeah, its a slightly different prob than op...

 

[profro]

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across the way I did. The frustration got the better of me. My bigger concern was that the cap stripped out during installation. I still have the old cap and it will screw into a point and become tight. The replacement cap just spins and spins requiring me to pry it out. Given the same material I won't try again however I will try the new material.

 

[CycloSteve]

I wonder if anyone would be able to model and CNC a set out of Delrin. I have a CNC machined Delrin shift knob on my Audi, and that material is absolutely incredible, and may be better for this application. Perhaps some materials experts can chime-in.

and being careful with my gears.

Steve

 

[azcromntic]

No actual criticism from me on your replacement gears - and I am grateful folks like you are around to provide fixes. My beef is with the actual Toyota design. There were plenty of solid motorized seat mechanisms out there prior to the early '90s that Toyota could've used as a model. After looking at the failure mechanism on these seats, some aspects were clearly under-designed.

I don't buy the argument some have put forth that the nylon gears are the "fuse" - if that were really the case it would be much simpler to replace them when they "blew". The whole mechanism is sort of a rube goldberg design anyway - way too complex for the job at hand.

X2 on that. Even if you went with a metal gear isnt the worm gear plastic also and thus it would then be stripped instead of the helical gear.

 

[nakman]

I wonder if anyone would be able to model and CNC a set out of Delrin. I have a CNC machined Delrin shift knob on my Audi, and that material is absolutely incredible, and may be better for this application. Perhaps some materials experts can chime-in.

and being careful with my gears.

Steve

so yeah, these new gears will be made from injection molded POM, which is what Delrin is. Delrin is the brand name, like Lexan is to Polycarbonate, etc. Delrin is the most well-known brand of it though Polyoxymethylene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

the current gears are made from nylon 12.

And no worries on the frustration, but thanks for that. Yes the caps do strip, but often they're stripping because the housing they're screwing into is stripped- for those it's a lot easier to glue, tape, shim those to make them work.

 

[SpillmanCruiser]

Nakman

Good stuff man. On the waiting list when they come in. thanks!

 

[MidMO450]

Nakman, that would be excellent! Again, I do not fault your parts at all, as it's a bad design by Toyota. I look forward to dropping the new gears in. FYI - I'll need the endcaps too as it blew both out when the gears stripped.

Ryan McKenzie - Columbia, MO. I assume you have my shipping info on file???

In my opinion, you can't go wrong with Cooter in your corner.

 

[harrydunn]

In my opinion, you can't go wrong with Cooter in your corner.

Cooter and Daisy were having relations. You know they were!

...and kudos to nakman for being a class act.

--MidMO450's brother.

 

[mercfan]

New seat gears...

Hi folks -

Nakman had installed the new injection molded thermoplastic gear in the Driver's seat of my 80 last night. The seat worked ok before, but it it was slow. Now the seat is very smooth and moves faster than before - the new plastic gear looks like a nice sturdy piece.

We can all appreciate your commitment to making a better product by investing in the equipment and processes necessary to produce an improved version of the part - thanks for making it happen. I hope it will serve the community well.

James

 

[nakman]

Right on James, thanks again for being the test subject! Yes I'm psyched at the improvement here- these new gears are more dense, more accurate, better surface finish, better all around. I'll post up a picture later..

couple things we learned last night that may have not come up before: One is when bolting it back up, make darn sure you hold the lead screws tight with a vice grip, so it can't spin when to tighten the nut on the end of it. I need to get that incorporated in the install instructions. Also, we noticed the pieces that connect the seat slides to the lead screw can actually twist, and they will perform better if they're at 90°. I'm going to also articulate this with a picture- but I think those two points are worth repeating.

and MidMO you can ignore the PM man, yes I should still have your address thanks I will have these right out to you.


edit: Here's a picture of the new gear vs. old gear. You can see the improvement in porosity, surface finish, and clarity of detail on the new one.. I had some of that green grease on my hands so you see some of that on the new gear, otherwise it would be pearly white. Also is a picture showing the two tips above.

 

[FloydtheDog]

Nakman, will you be making the end caps out of this more robust material as well? How soon will the new parts be available for ordering? Thanks for the great work!

 

[nakman]

At this point I don't have plans to redo the end caps- for those there are several ways to make them work, using super glue, washers, tape.. even if the housings strip out you can still make a stripped cap work. the gear is a lot more critical to function. Plus, this is a pretty significant investment, injection molding- it could take me quite a while to recover from the gears here, and I really don't want to get in too deep. I guess I'll see how things feel once I've paid off the gears, if there's still much demand for caps.

As for timing, we're looking at about 10 days now.. I'll bump up this thread (and the other one) once that happens.

 

[Fosters]

Thanks nakman.

 

[yodaTEQ]

Put me down for some gears and end caps when available

Thanks for all your hard work on this for our 80s

 

[Blue Phoenix]

Keeping up with this thread... Over the last few years I have become too-well acquainted with my seats and just last week did the same thing as cooter... as I was patting myself on the back for new record time I stripped the new screw.

Nakman, those new gears look slick. Looking forward to the bump.

 

[tpham32]

My replacement gear just stripped on me today. I was wondering if anyone could fab up metal ones?!

 

[MojoRisin]

I too, have had this problem.

I'm about to try and install my THIRD set, and see if i can get it this time.. I ordered two sets initially, and after mine messed up Gamviti sent me a third free of charge! Hopefully it will work this time...

 

[MojoRisin]

I'd probably be in for some new material gears as well!