Turbo Grafx/PC Engine CD Gear replacement available! $12 shipped

Keith Courage · 08/25/2011, 11:53 AM

Okay, guys, I finally got my shipment of gears in the mail. Just so you know these gears are not direct OEM replacements. The gears I have are to change the gear setup slightly to make it a 2 gear solution instead of 3 gears. So there is more work to be done besides just replacing one gear. The downfall of the two gear solution is that the drive is a bit noisier. However, on the plus side the load times for games are cut almost in half

I am charging $12 for these gears since I have to drill out the holes on them to the correct size which requires some patience. If you go too fast the hole gets crooked rendering the gear useless. I test out every gear to make sure it is nice and straight before shipping.

Pics of another thread on here will be used to explain some of this since I don't currently have a drive apart that I can take pictures of. I will update with current pics of everything once I perform this repair myself again in the future.
I am going to start my write up on this as if everyone here already knows how to take their drive apart and disconnect the ribbon cables for the CD lens. That part is found in this write up: https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=7193.0

1. First you have to get the motherboard moved out of the way so you can see the lens drive assembly. Once at that point you will want to unscrew the 3 screws(circled in red) holding down the lens assembly and very carefully lift the assembly up. Do not lift too far cause there will still be wires attached to it.

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2. Now that you have the lens assembly up in the air you are going to have to remove the middle Metal shaft for the old broken middle gear(circled in red). You do this by using a pair of small pliers and pull out while twisting it back and forth. The metal shaft I speak of is the one that is stationary and doesn't spin.

3. Remove the small metal part below the lens motor(circled in red). This is to make enough room for our new gear to fit. You do this by removing the one Phillips screw that is holding it on. After that part is off put the screw back in so your lens motor is still held on well.

4. Remove the old gear from the lens motor by just pulling it off. It may be on there pretty good so use a small flat head screw driver to push it off if you have to. Now push on the new gear until the teeth line up nicely. The new gear will take a bit of force to push it on. If you push it on too far use a flat head screw driver to pry it back off again.

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5.(optional and usually not needed)If the gear seems like it is too far away from the main spindle you might have to flip over the lens motor. Not sure why if it's due to the mounting or if the center spindle on the motor isn't perfectly straight but I'd say about %10 of CD drives have to have the lens motor flipped over for the gear to line up correctly.

6. You must change the polarity on the lens motor itself. To do this you start by pulling the white connector end for it off of the motherboard(circled in red). It is the cable with a blue and pink wire. Once you have the cable disconnected from the board you use a very small flat head to hold the plastic clips away on the white connector end. With the plastic clips held out you can pull out the two wires. Now that the wires are removed just put them back in the opposite direction. The wires should clip back in. Alternatively you could de-solder and then re-solder the wires in reverse on the motor itself. When you have it correct the wires will be opposite of the wires in the picture here. So blue on the right and pink on the left instead.

7. re-assemble your drive by putting the lens assembly back and re-attaching your lens ribbon cables. Put the bottom cover back on your drive but do not screw the bottom panel back on yet as you might need to remove it to do some adjustments.

8. Your drive should now be usable but there may be some fine tuning to be done. Most likely you won't have to do this next step but 10% of the time the drive will need the spindle speed potentiometer adjusted a little to make up for the slightly different gear size(circled in red). The best way to test this is to use an audio CD with lots of tracks on it. Hit the play button on your CD drive and listen to the first couple tracks and see if they work fine. Then try playing the very last tracks on the CD and see if they also work fine. If not then you will have to adjust the speed slightly one way or the other. The last tracks on a CD might skip a little until you get it right. I use YS 1&2 to test this out since it has the most audio tracks of any game I can think of. This part is what can take a quite a bit of time to get it just right.

BlueBMW · 08/25/2011, 02:50 PM

Two words...

Game-Tech.US · 08/25/2011, 05:04 PM

Don't suppose you want to share info on how we can do it ourselves cheaper?
For instance where does the gear you're using come from, how many teeth, O.D., what size is the hole we need to drill the gear out to, etc.
I just can't justify spending $15 on ONE gear.

Trevpwnsnoobs · 08/25/2011, 06:01 PM

I approve

Keith Courage · 08/25/2011, 07:42 PM

I am sorry to say but the gears are close to $10 each if you buy them one at a time and not in bulk. The said gear comes in a package of about 10 other different gears(not usable) which is why it is $10. I have not been able to find the gear on it's own to make things cheaper. Also, the drill bits are on ebay which is the cheapest I can find for $2.64 a piece with the shipping so you are almost at $15 anyways. The drill bit is a micro bit size 54. You cannot get the drill bits in a hardware store. I never bothered measuring the gear before. I suppose I can try to measure it. I just randomly ordered a bunch of gears from places until I found the right one. It took me quite a bit of trial and error till I found the right match.

BlueBMW · 08/25/2011, 08:03 PM

$15 is a very fair price for replacement gears. This is a known fix for dirt cheap.

Thanks kieth for offering these!

thesteve · 08/25/2011, 09:53 PM

that ends up a bit cheaper than my pulleys, and i dont know how it compares to chops gears.

Charlie · 08/26/2011, 09:56 AM

$15 is an excellent price for this. I priced a bulk custom-made gear set for the CD drive, the best price I could get was $18 in bulk of 500 pieces. Throw in package/shipping, and I would have charged at least $25 just to break even. I cannot see any reason why anyone would not pay $15 and do the fix yourself. I have done a number of gear replacements on these drives, and the effort is minimal.

The other option was to do as Steve did,.. buy a "compilation" set of gears, find which one gear in which package of many gears would actually be usable, and proceed to buy multiples of that package. (And gain lot's of excess gears in the process)

Good job, Steve!!

Charlie

grahf · 08/26/2011, 10:10 AM

Awesome! $15 is more than fair.

Platinumfungi · 08/28/2011, 01:14 PM

Bravo

SignOfZeta · 08/28/2011, 01:23 PM

Quote from: akaviolence on 08/25/2011, 05:04 PMDon't suppose you want to share info on how we can do it ourselves cheaper?
For instance where does the gear you're using come from, how many teeth, O.D., what size is the hole we need to drill the gear out to, etc.
I just can't justify spending $15 on ONE gear.

Obviously you haven't been tracking this problem as long as some other people here. Its worth at least four times that since it turns a totally useless paperweight back into a usable drive.

I will buy one of these for my spare (broken) drive but I'm not to excited about replacing it right away. The idea of "adjustment" of a drive makes me sick to my stomach. I'm trying to tweak a FC disc drive right now and its basically torture.

Game-Tech.US · 08/28/2011, 08:06 PM

Quote from: SignOfZeta on 08/28/2011, 01:23 PM
Quote from: akaviolence on 08/25/2011, 05:04 PMDon't suppose you want to share info on how we can do it ourselves cheaper?
For instance where does the gear you're using come from, how many teeth, O.D., what size is the hole we need to drill the gear out to, etc.
I just can't justify spending $15 on ONE gear.
Obviously you haven't been tracking this problem as long as some other people here. Its worth at least four times that since it turns a totally useless paperweight back into a usable drive.

Obviously not true, April of 2008 I posted a 'how to' on diagnosing and fixing the return to center limit switch in the tgcd.
That was right after forum members really started investigating this gear issue.

To me its too much, but that may have a lot to do with how many units I need to fix, 15+.
If I only had one or two then it may not seem that excessive...
If we knew what this gear's OD and tooth count were, we could possibly order it in bulk for cheap.
Should be cheaper since its not an obscure reduction gear, just a simple spur gear.

Also, thought i'd much rather have a drop in replacement, a gear on gear solution interests me more than any belt type fix. That's a whole other set of problems.

Quote from: Keith Courage on 08/25/2011, 07:42 PMAlso, the drill bits are on ebay which is the cheapest I can find for $2.64 a piece with the shipping so you are almost at $15 anyways. The drill bit is a micro bit size 54. You cannot get the drill bits in a hardware store.

Grainger has them for $1.10 a piece.

Quote from: Keith Courage on 08/25/2011, 11:53 AMthere may be some fine tuning to be done. 75% of the time drives will need the spindle speed potentiometer adjusted a little to make up for the slightly different gear size(circled in red).

I was wondering, if the motor and worm gear spindles are the same diam. you could put your new big gear on the worm gear shaft and the smaller gear off the worm onto the motor shaft and maybe it would run a little slower and maybe less noise or possibly less adjustment???

BlueBMW · 08/28/2011, 08:51 PM

Quote from: akaviolence on 08/28/2011, 08:06 PMTo me its too much, but that may have a lot to do with how many units I need to fix, 15+.
If I only had one or two then it may not seem that excessive...
If we knew what this gear's OD and tooth count were, we could possibly order it in bulk for cheap.
Should be cheaper since its not an obscure reduction gear, just a simple spur gear.

For someone wanting to fix their ONE CD unit for personal gaming use, $15 is fantastic as it saves someone from having to spend $70 to $90 for a working CDROM. For someone with 15+ units... $15 each is high because what else would someone do with 15+ units but sell them once they were working? Every bit of cost put into each drive makes them less profitable.

QuoteAlso, thought i'd much rather have a drop in replacement, a gear on gear solution interests me more than any belt type fix. That's a whole other set of problems.

Not really... infact, the belt drive has a few things that all these substitute gear solutions dont have. First of all you dont need to reverse the motor, secondly its silent. I can understand that belts wear out, but lets be honest, how long do they typically last? And say it does wear out... they're less than a $1 and might take you 10 minutes to replace.

QuoteI was wondering, if the motor and worm gear spindles are the same diam. you could put your new big gear on the worm gear shaft and the smaller gear off the worm onto the motor shaft and maybe it would run a little slower and maybe less noise or possibly less adjustment???

The worm gear and motor have vastly different diameters. The worm gear is basically a 1/8" press fit while the motor is MUCH smaller.

In justification of the price, I'll throw out a comparison....

The region mod chips I had made up... I've been asking $18 each shipped for them which is about what I've seen similar region mod chips sell for in the past. Each chip has to be soldered, packaged, labeled and shipped. I go even further and I test all the connections with a meter to make sure there are no missed / poor solder connections. The cost of the parts is around $3 each, but when you add in the cost of supplies, shipping mailers, shipping, time / effort to package / mail them.... the profit is under $10 each. Not to mention I had put in about $500 up front to make them in the first place. Before that, there was a lot of time spent developing the design / method of the chip. So the $8 or $9 profit I make pays me for the time / effort I put into making / shipping them, AND for the development time before the chips were made. Additionally... when one fails, I'll back it up and replace any defective ones for free. Inevitably it will happen and I have to plan for that eventuality.

Similarly, Keith Courage had to locate gears that worked pretty much by trial and error. I've tried too, and believe me its frustrating to have 50 or so gears that you've bought and paid for that dont work! So in the end, even if Keith is making $10 profit on each gear... good for him. That's well on par with the industry for this sort of repair part. Like me he has to spend time drilling / preparing / checking the gears and then packaging and shipping them.

end rant

chop5 · 08/28/2011, 09:43 PM

very nice chris,excellant tutorial.
come on over to the shoutbox were we techys talk for hours on end of the obscure technologies of mankinds past and how to restore them

Game-Tech.US · 08/29/2011, 10:39 AM

Quote from: BlueBMW on 08/28/2011, 08:51 PM
Quote from: akaviolence on 08/28/2011, 08:06 PMTo me its too much, but that may have a lot to do with how many units I need to fix, 15+.
If I only had one or two then it may not seem that excessive...
If we knew what this gear's OD and tooth count were, we could possibly order it in bulk for cheap.
Should be cheaper since its not an obscure reduction gear, just a simple spur gear.
For someone wanting to fix their ONE CD unit for personal gaming use, $15 is fantastic as it saves someone from having to spend $70 to $90 for a working CDROM. For someone with 15+ units... $15 each is high because what else would someone do with 15+ units but sell them once they were working? Every bit of cost put into each drive makes them less profitable.

Yes, that's what i'm doing, buy em, fix/mod em, resell em, hope for some profit.

Quote from: BlueBMW on 08/28/2011, 08:51 PM
Quote from: akaviolence on 08/28/2011, 08:06 PMAlso, thought i'd much rather have a drop in replacement, a gear on gear solution interests me more than any belt type fix. That's a whole other set of problems.
Not really... infact, the belt drive has a few things that all these substitute gear solutions dont have. First of all you dont need to reverse the motor, secondly its silent. I can understand that belts wear out, but lets be honest, how long do they typically last? And say it does wear out... they're less than a $1 and might take you 10 minutes to replace.

Yes, but a drop in would take less time and effort to fix each unit and work as intended. My other concern about the belt is it would slip when the sled reaches either end and thats not how it was made to work. It may work perfect and I do like the idea of being a silent operation, but would still rather have an original replacement.

Quote from: BlueBMW on 08/28/2011, 08:51 PM
Quote from: akaviolence on 08/28/2011, 08:06 PMI was wondering, if the motor and worm gear spindles are the same diam. you could put your new big gear on the worm gear shaft and the smaller gear off the worm onto the motor shaft and maybe it would run a little slower and maybe less noise or possibly less adjustment???
The worm gear and motor have vastly different diameters. The worm gear is basically a 1/8" press fit while the motor is MUCH smaller.

I see, been too long since i've had one open and couldn't tell from the pics, too bad...

thesteve · 08/29/2011, 02:32 PM

the belt slippage is not an issue as its not a syncro motor, and extends motor and driver IC life.

Trevpwnsnoobs · 08/30/2011, 03:06 PM

shouldnt this be in the sale thread?

termis · 08/31/2011, 08:11 AM

This is some great info. Thanks for the post.

nat · 09/02/2011, 09:51 PM

I'm a little late to the party, but I wanted to say thanks for finally sharing your information with the community. Many will benefit from this.

Keith Courage · 02/18/2012, 04:37 AM

Just letting everyone here know that I just got some more gears in. I was also able to find a slightly cheaper place to order them from so $12 is now the cost for a gear.

blueraven · 02/18/2012, 05:04 AM

OK. I will order one from you later this weekend.

By isolating and contributing this fix to the community and sharing the knowledge for all to see you have done everyone here a service and I think you for that.

I'm glad you've decided to stick around, Keith. You're cool in my book.

Frank_fjs · 02/18/2012, 05:21 AM

Good work Keith - great to see a solution to this problem.

Duo_R · 02/18/2012, 05:30 AM

shoutbox on the backup pcefx site?

Quote from: chop5 on 08/28/2011, 09:43 PMvery nice chris,excellant tutorial.
come on over to the shoutbox were we techys talk for hours on end of the obscure technologies of mankinds past and how to restore them

thesteve · 02/21/2012, 09:51 AM

freeforums.org/new_chat.php

Keith Courage · 02/21/2012, 03:49 PM

I'll head on over when I get a chance guys. Thanks for the invite. I work to dam much.

Keith Courage · 03/30/2012, 02:40 AM

I just got more gears in if anyone needs them.

Samurai Ghost · 03/30/2012, 03:48 AM

Yeah, I'm interested in a couple sets! I'll send you a PM about it.

kamiboy · 04/20/2012, 11:40 AM

I was image searching for plastic spur gears to see whether I could find any that remotely look like that problematic fragile one in the PC Engine CD-ROM2 and noticed quite a few links to this place:

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/271844309/Plastic_spur_gear_mould.html

It seems to be a site where manufacturers offer their wares to be sold in bulks of varying sizes. Most of the gear related producers seem to indicate that they are able to make these according to custom specifications. The link above seems to have a very reasonable 38 set minimum order limit as well.

It might be a long shot but perhaps it is possible to secure a supply of perfect replacement gears for broken CD-ROM2 units.

kamiboy · 05/02/2012, 03:23 PM

Keith do you have any gears left? I want to secure one. I sent you a PM a while back.

Keith Courage · 05/02/2012, 09:51 PM

Yes, I still have them and plan to keep getting them as long as the places I order from don't run out.

PikachuWarrior · 05/02/2012, 10:17 PM

so when these replacements are done, how long do they last in the system?

thesteve · 05/02/2012, 10:50 PM

should be considered a permanent fix

Keith Courage · 05/03/2012, 03:17 AM

They should be a permanent fix. I haven't heard of any falling apart but then again I have only been using these gears for about a year now. I believe the reason the old gear breaks is due to friction since it spins on a stationary spindle. With this setup everything moves together so no center spindle friction on any of the gears.

Marll · 05/11/2012, 01:25 PM

So, you say the gears cut loading time in games? That sounds awesome since the loading time on some can be quite long.

This just makes me realize that I'd like to get quite a bit of work done on my systems that I just don't have the time for any more.

This gear fix if it reduces load times
The TGCD register issue that you mentioned in a different post (my TGCD has had that noise since day 1 out of the box in 1990 or so)
DIN 8 installed for a DIN to SCART cable for RGB installed in my TGCD base unit
Region switch mod
Full cap replacement on my Express
Potentially updated screen for Express

Wonder how much someone would charge to do all these things as a 1 stop shop kind of deal. I'd be really nervous about sending my prized system out in the mail, but some of this work would just increase enjoyment.

Keith Courage · 05/11/2012, 01:49 PM

Being that you want an updated screen for your express I'd get a hold of Thesteve here in these forums. I have no experience updating express screens.

Marll · 05/11/2012, 02:18 PM

That'd actually be the lowest on my list and more of a wish than anything. I'd really like all the other stuff done though.

thesteve · 05/11/2012, 11:57 PM

well im around when your ready

mrjiggs · 05/23/2012, 06:41 PM

Sent you a PM!

herr-g · 06/01/2012, 03:52 PM

Received the gears today. Thank you very much!!
I'll try to repair my broken drive the next days if i can find the free time.

PikachuWarrior · 06/01/2012, 03:59 PM

Another question: If I bought the gear(s) mentioned here, would I be able to get them installed by you if I sent the CD unit? Can you quote me a price too?

SegaCD · 06/06/2012, 06:50 PM

For people on the edge about purchasing one of these:
I ordered one of these gears about a month ago and only just found the time to install it now on my Japanese CD-ROM-ROM.
It was a fairly painless install. The guide made it sound like the laser assembly was a bigger pain in the butt to remove from the shell than it actually was. However, there was a plate I had to remove that wasn't mentioned in the guide (when removing the the grounding wire from the larger ribbon cable). It just slid out though so it wasn't a big deal. I laughed when I found that I didn't have to pull the old, threadless middle gear off, but, instead, it just broke in half and fell off the shaft when I touched it!

After I popped in the gear and put it all together again, I tried it with a CD and found that on later tracks it would skip ahead or behind a good 20 seconds or so every 30 secs to a minute. I tried adjusting the "speed" pot as mentioned in the guide but it did nothing but make it worse (only when I turned it to the extreme ends). I tried greasing the laser's sled with some clear silicone grease...and it fixed the problem!

Overall, its taken about an hour and a half to do this mod at a normal-to-slow pace (not including the full audio CD run-thru which I'm currently doing) and its made a totally useless CD-ROM-ROM work again! I could not be more pleased!

Definitely get one of these if you've got a dead drive!
And thanks, Keith Courage!

Keith Courage · 06/06/2012, 08:45 PM

yeah, the guide makes it sound like a lot of work even though it's not. I just wanted to try and cover everything in detail as much as possible.

Also, you didn't really have to take off that black cover for the laser assembly that you mentioned but it can't hurt anything. With just a slight bit of force you can slide the new gear in without taking that plate off.

FiftyQuid · 06/06/2012, 08:49 PM

I just finished up taking mine apart. The only part I had difficulty with was removing that small metal piece and putting the screw back in. The entire teardown took 10 minutes, but getting that screw back in took another 15. Damn my huge hands! Ha! My CD is ready for the new gear. I am anxiously waiting for the mailman to deliver it.

Keith, if there are any photos you want me to take to upgrade your guide just let me know.

YAGRS · 06/08/2012, 01:59 PM

I got my gear today, installed it, switched the blue and pink wires, put everything back together, turned on my Turbo CD and . . . the disc won't spin. The laser is moving, but for some reason, the disc is stationary. My Turbo CD had been working previously (I just had to keep opening it up and moving the middle gear to loosen it, which is why I wanted to do this mod).

Anyone have any ideas what I might have done? Everything appears to be intact, so I'm having problems determining what might have gone wrong.

thesteve · 06/08/2012, 02:26 PM

you might have lost connection to the laser sled (broken or unplugged cable)

YAGRS · 06/08/2012, 02:29 PM

I'm going to show my ignorance here but, would the laser still move if that were the case? I followed all of the wires, and everything appears to be intact.

Keith Courage · 06/08/2012, 02:43 PM

Double check that you put the lens cables back in the correct direction. The larger one goes in with the contacts facing outwards away from the system and the smaller one goes in with the contacts facing inwards. Also as Thesteve said you should check to see if there are any rips in the lens cables

YAGRS · 06/08/2012, 03:08 PM

Well . . . damn. The only issue I saw with the cables is that the ground strip was coming loose. I pressed it back on, made sure that everything was hooked up correctly, and the disc still won't spin. The only other issue that I can see is that I have at least one cap that has leaked (either one of the 470 uF caps or the 100 uF cap that is next to it—they're so close I can't tell which).

Any other suggestions?

EDIT:

Never mind. I pressed down on the CD assembly, and now discs spin. Working well now. Thanks for the help, and thanks for finding this solution to the gear problem, Keith!

EDIT 2:

Well, I thought everything was okay, but it won't spin some discs. It seems to do okay with Turbo CDs, but I put in an audio CD, and it either won't spin at all or will just barely spin. It's almost as if it's struggling to spin the disc. Could this have anything at all to do with the potentiometer? I'm going to try to adjust it.

Keith Courage · 06/08/2012, 06:04 PM

struggling to spin? Is the assembly back in all the way? You shouldn't have to press down on it to get it to not scrape on anything. The pots could need a slight adjustment but not much. Make sure you didn't bump them and knock them way off during the install.

YAGRS · 06/08/2012, 06:50 PM

Yeah, it looks like I f'ed this one up. The screw that held the metal piece I needed to remove to make room for the gear wouldn't unscrew. I tried a few times, and all that I managed to do was strip the head a little. So, I decided to cut the metal piece out instead. I didn't realize how thin the metal is for the black cover, and I guess when I was cutting the metal piece out, I pressed into it and bent it. I've been trying to fix it, but I haven't managed to get it right yet, and more things are going wrong, so . . . I'm done, at least for tonight. I've managed what should have been an easy fix into a bit of a nightmare