Back story:
Ordered a Trampa Spur Gear Drive (SGD) complete, first experience with a gear drive setup. Out of the box, the right gear drive has been making a lot of noise compared to the left. The left seems to run great, when I isolate running each wheel, the left side sounds smooth just like every video I can find of SGD. The right sound however feels “crunchy” when I turn it and makes a lot of questionable noises when riding. It feels as though there is slightly more resistance/roll on the right side, and the sound that it makes while coasting/braking is really loud compared to the left side.
Asked Trampa (disclaimer: to their credit, Dave has been doing a great job responding and answering questions), basically have gone through all the bits about backlash and lug nut adjustments. They were generous to send me an extra set of gears and parts, tried replacing the slave pulley, same deal.
I have tried adjust the back lash in all kinds of ways, with no real change. Am being told “thats just the way it is sometimes”.
Video taken while coasting/braking down hill:
Flat street:
Really not sure what to do/say aside from Trampa has been very generous with advice and parts, but not feeling too confident about the board. I am being offered to receive an Open Belt System, to swap it with if I don’t like the noise. (Have had the board for 1.5 months and still have yet to take it for more than a test ride).
Feel like maybe there’s something I’m missing or not understanding. Really not looking to strip down a board I paid to have assembled and hoping theres some way to make the SGD work out (love the power despite the troubles!).
Community thoughts/opinions/advice is greatly appreciated/welcomed
Packed plenty of Lucas Heavy Duty: filled every tooth on the slave and smeared the pinion. Do agree sounds like there’s movement though (thank you for affirming) and kept getting told to check the backlash over and over…
Agreed and thank you for the confirmation/observation. Basically have been resisting the temptation to ride since I received it and noticed the issues. Trampa has been sending parts, but not getting anywhere with improving what ever makes that sound/click.
The videos have literally only been test runs up/down my alley way, to demo the sounds to Trampa. At first I sent clips of the gear drive running while it was off ground in my garage and was told it would sound different when I rode it or that it sounded normal to them. So basically the videos were quick run downs to the garage to make it very clear the sounds were not “normal” and were worse when riding.
I think I may have found a Trampa affiliate in the same state as me after doing some research. After talking he was generous enough to offer to let me bring my board up to him to check it out and do any needed repairs. Probably going to rest the board till then and make a nice road trip out of the deal.
Yea sometimes 2 people in person is much more efficient. But only sometimes.lol It makes me crazy when I can’t touch something and try and help people.
I had the exact same issue with my 1:7 helical gear drive from Trampa. I spent hours adjusting the backlash and reapplying grease. The problem is not necessarily the backlash… The reason it is making that noise is because the two gears are not “flush” to each other.
The big gear is attached directly to the wheel, which is attached to the axile. This makes the big gear perfectly perpendicular to the axile and in a way separate from the body of the gear drive. The problem comes from the way that the gear drive is mounted to the truck. Since the motor / small gear is attached to the body of the gear drive, if the gear drive body / small gear itself is not perpendicular to the rear truck like the large gear is, then the two gears are not mating properly, touching each other on a slight angle and results in the drive train being ear piercingly loud.
The way I was able to fix this on my board was to remove the wheel and gear drive cover, clean out all of the old grease, loosen the four bolts on the back that set the gear meshing, reinstall the wheel and axil nut nice and tight without reinstalling the gear drive cover. From here play around with adjusting the tightness of the four bolts on the back of the gear drive that is responsible for setting the gear mesh. If these are not tightened correctly the gearbox will become offset and at a weird angle compared to the wheel. I was able to visually see that the gearbox was not parallel to the wheel.
play around with the tightness of the bolts on the back and try giving the board plenty of throttle in between doing so and you should be able to hear it getting quieter the more you get the body of the drive train parallel to the wheel.
I have exact same problem, although no talk about part replacement or really any other help from Trampa than “adjust the backslash” . The other side of the board is sounding wobbly and crunchy while the other side makes even sound.
Here is what I got as reply from Ted@Trampa regarding the noise “…there is no secret regarding the SGD making noise, gears on gears make noise, everybody knows that and anyway the noise is not that bad IMO.” 2800e board and this is the level of help I get from Trampa. It’s a bad joke.
