Slide gear stripped

Yours is the first one I have heard about.  Our 177 slide has gone in and out a bunch of times and as far as I know still works.  I will let you know in Spring when the thaw comes.

It bothers me that there is no automatic shut off, at least on my 2010 176, for the slide.  I run mine out until it clicks 2 or 3 times and when I run it back in, I run it in until it clicks 2 or 3 times.  Those clicks are the sounds of the gears jumping, which has the potential to break or chip one gear or the other every time it clicks.  It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to put a kill switch on both ends of the track so that it would shut off at the proper point.

So, my guess would be that maybe you, or someone else, kept running the slide out long after it was out as far as it would go, or in way past the stopping point, just letting it click, click, click, click, until one or more of the gears' teeth broke off. 

It's kind of like Russian Roulette every time it clicks.  The gears a strong, but my guess is that they could break any time they jump like that.  The more they jump, the more likely they are to break though.

This just occurred to me: Theoretically, maybe the gears can be adjusted so that they would easily jump at the ends of their travel, and maybe, if they weren't adjusted correctly, it would be much harder for them to jump.  They might still jump, but the gears would be under way more pressure when they jumped, therefore more likely to break.  I have no idea if this is the way the gears work, but it might explain why no one else has heard of this problem.  Maybe your gears weren't adjusted correctly.

TT

Originally posted by Keith-N-Dar The guy who gave us the walk around when we bought ours said it was a clutch, not gears clicking at the end of the travel.  Not having taken it apart I only have his word on that, but he said it was designed to do that.

I believe you are right about the sound being the clutch.  If it were a gear problem, the slide could not be retracted manually.  I am surprised the FR did not use limit switches rather than a clutch, if a clutch is actually used. 

Bob

It isw a good sign that we are all so ignorant about this: a rare happening.  If it was common we would have come up here in the past.  It may have been a defective drive unit.  Since it isn't happening lots this seems more likely than a design fault.

Sounds to me like clutch not gears if the drilll worked to retract it.  Please let us know as much as you can about the fix.  I  know I am curious now to see how this all works.