Hey all,
Just thought I would post up that I have installed the 3 piece intermediate gear from a gen 1 box in my gen 2 box for my wifes stock machine. Went together with no issues and no shims.
Fits perfectly it seems. Hopefully it holds up at Little Sahara in Sept.
I will have my good spare gen 2 box just in case.
I will let you all know how it works out.

If you have any more gen 1 intermediate small gears I have a gen 1 box in need of one. That seems to be the one that breaks teeth off.

Chad brought one to little sahara for me when we were trying to dial in the z1 for rippenrick.
I really need another one myself. Those gears are like gold now a days.
And yes that always seems to be the one that gets chewed up. IMO I think it all starts with the crappy little needle bearings in the shift gear. It appears they fail from shock load and cause the shift gear to roll over and eat up the intermediate gear.
Is that what you see as well on failures?

I think that could be part of the problem. The gear box that I need that intermediate small gear for didn't have that problem, it just broke 1 tooth off the gear and the rest of it is fine. It just has the bad heat treated strength problem. I still haven't broke any gear boxes myself but we have had some failures in our group. I figured that Chad had parts for these gen 1 boxes but he isn't interested in looking into the pallet to find them for us.

I can't get him to dig for me either. I am sure trailers are packed full and not organized. If there is one thing worth digging out that would be it.
How can I visually tell if I have the upgraded version of the gen1 gears?
Any idea? Hope I did not put a weak ass gear in my box. At least it is in a stock power machine.

If you have the early gen 1 gears sitting beside a set of gen 2 or Chad gears you can see a difference in the color of the metal. Its hard to tell without having them beside each other. The gen 1 upgraded ones, that came in the XL's and the Riot's before the gen 2 trans came out, are the same color as the gen 2 and the Chad gears.

Great. I have the original weak gen 1 gears then. Cross my fingers it does not take out the rest of the box when it lets go.