Peening of brass gears

[keven]

Having removed some armatures from the gearplate to tweek /replace, I realized that the gear didn’t fit titely enough...
tried using a beebee and a hammer to peen the brass motor gear holes. Worked rather well.
however when i tried to do the same on the drive pinion gear, the gear cracked...
i had both new pinion gears and shafts, but they initially came loose after installing in the chassis and powering up to speed.
hence the attempt to peen the gear to fit..

(super glue is not an option)

any good options for getting pinion gears ready for installation on a shaft?

[jmacartney]

Check out the tools made by RT-HO. There is a peening tool in that collection.

[RichD]

Another term for that operation is swaging. If you want to re-use brass pinion and driven pancake gears they should be swaged. Sometimes an idler gear can be loose as well. Idler gears can be swaged if they are only a little loose, otherwise RT-HO also has a tool to expand the idler gear post.
Both the swaging tool and the gear post tool are included in this article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1msY...ew?usp=sharing
If the armature shaft, cluster shaft or axle holes are too large Wizzard sells a swaging tool for those.

[Kevan]

Solder...that's what 1/32 and 1/24 guys do.

[RichD]

Remember that we are talking about pancake cars here. If you tried to solder on an armature pinion you would risk melting the gear plate. You could tin the gear so a little solder gets in the hole, then press the gear onto the armature shaft. If you used too much solder it could get between the gear teeth and you probably would have to throw the gear away.
Anyone that expects to run pancake cars a lot and especially if you are going to race them should invest in a set of proper tools.

[keven]

Once I get my stimulus check, I’ll be looking into getting either a pin punch, peening pliers, or a swage tool.
the solder trick is to get a thin layer of solder inside the hole of the gear before attempt to mate it to the shaft.
this has worked for me in the past, but it ultimately fails at some point...
not sure if you can solder to steel?

[RichD]

When I was running 1/24th commercial raceway cars I sometimes had to solder steel pinion gears. It is best to use acid flux when soldering steel.