New plastic gear for a razor

Harry If you can get the dimensions precisely I can hob one for you, I will need the OD, number of teeth, spindle dimensions etc. I also need some idea of material, is it nylon, acetal or what?

Peter

Thanks...

I'm not sure what the material is, it looks like some hard plastic. It also seems to be molded on the shaft rather than a press fit or at least I have not been able to move it. On the far (unseen) end of the shaft, is a water seal followed by a a spigot to drive the head.

You can see the seal and part of the spigots in the two still in their places. I'm thinking either cut the entire gear and its base off back to the spindle, or just trim the thin part of the gear away, leaving the base in place on the spindle and making it a tight push fit on the base, with a bit of suitable glue.

I could post the entire spindle.

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com pretended :

Gear overall diameter 15.25mm 1.18mm thick

SS spindle diameter 1.48mm, length 22.84mm

Boss diameter 4.00mm, length of boss on spindle 3.37mm - This is a part of the same moulding as the gear.

Teeth ( [ ] = missing ones) [1] 10 [2] 9 [3] 9 = 34 Total

If you really like the razor, the simpest solution would be to buy one or two for spares via fleabay, which should give you enough parts for years, though if one of the gears has stripped, the others are sure to follow :-(.

Another way is to use a soldering iron to sink some metal into the gear, then file to shape and use epoxy to strengthen. Very crude solution and won't look pretty, but i've used such methods in the past to repair such things as the film advance on the small Rollei 35mm cameras, for which parts are also no longer available.

Cutting new gears sounds like a labour of love...

Regards,

Chris

A mere 8 years old? Pah! I was most put out that a new switch was not available for my 28 year old Phillishave. Phillips even told me it was no longer under guarantee

Seriously, the old Phillishaves were beautifully made machines and mine has been in daily use since new. The top plate is getting a bit corroded now, and I have to repair the switch every couple of years, but the rest is still functioning well.

Cliff Coggin.

on 14/10/2012, Cliff Coggin supposed :

The designs used to last last for many years too, now they bring out slight 'improvements' yearly and not nearly so well made.

When I wrote to Phillips chasing parts, they also told me mine was probably out of warranty.

Sorted now I think, won a not very expensive one on ebay.

Thanks for the email offer Peter, but I managed to win one on ebay 30 minutes ago.

Some years ago I had one of the early 90 series Landrovers. Had owned a couple previously, one series 2a and a series 3. My wife used it to drive to work from time to time and had been saying for a couple of weeks that there was a squeaking noise when despressing the clutch. I said that I would look at it come the weekend, but the pedal went to the floor with a bang one day. On inspection, found a crudely bent piece of ~6 gauge steel serving as the clutch yoke with a dimple running on completely unprotected ball support. The ball had run out of lube and fatigued right through the yoke. This compared to the earlier versions, which had dual needle roller bearing support on the yoke - ie: job done right. It was about 3 years old and well out of warranty, but wrote a snotty letter to LR saying something like a first year apprentice could do a better design job, but they completely ignored that and just wrote back telling me the vehicle was out of warranty. Not even an apology !.

I swore then that I would never buy another LR, but can't believe they are still that bad, especially after Ford got in and sorted them out. Great vehicle otherwise, but let down by poor design and materials...

Regards,

Chris

A guy I used to know used to work for LR in the 1990s and said they seemed to have no concept of warranty costs. At the time they were creeping up the size of the Rover V8 from 3.5 to eventually 4.5 IIRC. The engine was known to have a week bottom end when the size was increased but they went ahead and as it got bigger the bottom end failure rate started to shoot up and apparently they just paid out for a new engine. The answer was to use the cross bolted block which I understand they eventually had to do things got so bad. The silly thing is that they made the cross bolted block for TVR on the same line as the other engines, just at one point the TVR blocks went off for drilling the cross bolts then it re-joined the line again.