Gearbox

Yesterday MrsCyclops accidentally drove a remote control car onto a hard surface from a great height, shearing off one of the rear wheels.  That's the sort of thing CyclopsJnr usually does without parental assistance. .. 

This afternoon I stripped it down.  I had to dismantle the whole rear end of the car - shell, roll cage and suspension in order to extract the rear axle assembly. Then I had to open up the gearbox to get access to the broken plastic fitting that attaches the wheel to the drive shaft (shown at the top of the picture, on the end of the metal shaft from the geatbox - normally that sits within a protruding part of the gearbox housing).

Glue alone clearly wasn't going to do it as there were some plastig fragments missing, so I found a nail the right diameter to fit inside the plastic fitting and drilled the fitting so I could fit a cut-off section of nail in to reinforce the join so it was strong enough to support the weight of the car.  

The repair was successful initially, but it only lasted for about 5 minutes of driving.  The torque through the rear axle is pretty impressive, and was clearly too much for my glue.

I'm currently having a think about whether there's a way I can reinforce the join against torque as well as the bending forces...  I'm not hopeful, but maybe something will come to me!  

The car already has some other issues, including missing clips to hold on the body shell and a steering mechanism that no longer self-centres.  It's had a hard life and doesn't owe us anything...