Talked to WCR today and he montioned Gear Cancer where the tooth faces have little pits on them from heat & friction wearing them out.
Anybody have any experience or anything knowledgeable to say on this?
Is it a real concern; will micro polishing & cryoing fix it, should I be concerned?
Suzuki’s gears in their off-road machines have had these problems for over 30 years. The premature erosion on the load-carrying surface on the teeth shows up on their 80cc stuff all the way to the LT 500.
It is my opinion that Suzuki does not use the same alloys and heat treatment that they use in their street bikes or the process that other manufactures use on their off-road machines. I seldom see this cancer on the gears teeth on the other brands of off-road machines.
Cryo or micro-polishing may help but I do not believe that it is going to fix this metallurgical problem. This problem is most common on third gear on the LT 500. Third gear is typically the gear that gets the most use.
Jerry can custom harden gears be made, can you make or know of a source for this?
What alloy are OEM gears, Anyone know the Rockwell Hardness of the OEM gears?
I can have gears made to my specifications but would be expensive unless we had batches of a hundered or more of each gear made.
Greg at WCR says he rockwells all the gears and then cryo's and miro polishes the gears.
He also said that the cryo brings the up the rockwell and then the polishing also brings up the rockwell about just as much as the cryo.
I'm sure it will not resolve a steel composition issue but I'm thinking from the sounds of it, it'll be better than just the raw un heat-treated metal being exposed after the undercut as far as durability and wear.
Greg also told me about how he has done testing with the cryo and the micro polishing on a 421 cub's override. He said that the they used to wear out the actual back cut that throws it out of 1st when it's shifted and now he's seeing no wear marks after the same amount of passes, approx 50. He also mentioned about a MX team he is doing work for where they'd get 6 months of racing on a trans and then it'd be worn out and he tried this process on their trans's and now they're getting 2 yrs out of them before they worn out.
Not 100% on this but my pops is basically a metalurgist so I'll ask him about it and see what he says.
If it works sounds like cheap insurance to me.
i didnt even wanna put my wcr tranny in my bike after the override and micro-polish it was soo nice looking like chrome.
WCR did the back cut, cryo and micro-polish on my LT500 trans. A couple of my gears had slight pitting but he said it was nothing to worry about. So far, it shifts great and hasn't popped out of gear once.
He also said, in his experience, gears that were ran with the "gear saver" oils showed more pitting than those ran with type f automatic transmission fluid or even motor oil. He recommended type f. That is what I have been using.
He also said, in his experience, gears that were ran with the "gear saver" oils showed more pitting than those ran with type f automatic transmission fluid or even motor oil. He recommended type f. That is what I have been using.
That is exactly what he told me and I'm planning on doing.
Re: Gear Cancer?
« Reply #1 on: September 27, 2012, 10:05:19 am »
Quote
Suzuki’s gears in their off-road machines have had these problems for over 30 years. The premature erosion on the load-carrying surface on the teeth shows up on their 80cc stuff all the way to the LT 500.
It is my opinion that Suzuki does not use the same alloys and heat treatment that they use in their street bikes or the process that other manufactures use on their off-road machines. I seldom see this cancer on the gears teeth on the other brands of off-road machines.
Cryo or micro-polishing may help but I do not believe that it is going to fix this metallurgical problem. This problem is most common on third gear on the LT 500. Third gear is typically the gear that gets the most use.
This is 100% correct.
Micro-polish and cryo will do nothing to fix this problem. The gears are junk now but if you get good ones you can send them out and have them re treated to fix any further issue.
So to understand, treating only new set of gears is where the benifits are in cryo or micro-polishing ? Any one know what a whole new zilla trans is costing these days?
already damaged gears are junk already no sense in spending $$$ on them. If you can get new or some good used ones it could be worth having them retreated and micro polished. You can also run 1/2 qt more fluid to help with gear wear. This is a must for banshees.