W124 seat belt presenter/butler gears

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Celicasaur

Active Member
Joined
Dec 17, 2011
Messages
199
Car
W212 E63 AMG PP
The original plastic teeth on my seat belt thingy have broken off finally....can anybody recommend me to a good source for buying replacement gears? I've found a place on eBay that does them for £40 delivered but they're 3D printed and probably from some guys bedroom, so I'm not sure how reliable they'll be. Any thoughts/suggestions?

 
There are very few people offering these. I bought a few complete assemblies to hedge against future failure. One assembly had knackered gears but the other's fine and those 2 were supplied almost free with the seat belts I wanted.

I think their write-up looks encouraging. In your shoes, I'd give that vendor a try for £40 delivered to the door.

The alternative is buying complete assemblies but that will cost more. But, of course, you'll get everything, possibly even the control modules.

Good hunting.

RayH
 
Thanks Ray.

I found a couple more suppliers online yesterday - one from china which i've lost track of now, but another was around 80 euros

I think I'll just take a stab then at the eBay ones from Poland and report back in due course.
 
Well, so the gears arrived a couple of days ago. Now I just need to figure out how to open the mechanism to fit them. Ahem....Lord knows I'm going to break one of the fiddly clips in the process.

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So i finally pulled my finger out and begun to take apart the seat belt thingy for the installation of these new cogs.

First step is to remove the tiny circlip on the black thing

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...and then the washer underneath it.

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With the trusty screwdriver, the black thing can be pried out

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Give it a bit of a wiggle and the black thing is almost out...

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....and if you're anything like me, you won't have been expecting the spring tension to have been THAT strong to have made the black thing shoot off and out of the driveway in a flash :oops:

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But yeah, so when you go to retrieve it from the road, it'll look like this

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A quick poke with the screwdriver helps to get the old cogs out from their home

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And then you can take a moment to admire the broken gears and be all smug because you have new ones right next to them

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BUT....ARGHHH it didn't go so smoothly after that. The guys sent me the wrong damn parts :wallbash: so now I have to raise the issue with Octooclassic.com and see what they can do about it. I'll post updates as and when I have them.

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FML.

So another set of gears arrived from Octoclassic (the right ones this time) but the little gear doesn't fit onto the spline shaft. I guess there's only so much resolution a 3D printer can get down to and carving out those little teeth is probably a task too much for them.

I've asked for a refund and to go our separate ways. Let's see what happens with that.

octoclassic_gears.jpg
 
So I managed to get a refund from octoclassic, so credit goes there I suppose.

Still doesn't address the issue of these gears...half tempted to get my 'good ones' replicated but judging by the lack of interest in this thread, I doubt i'll be able to sell off the rest of the batch. Looks like I'll be looking for a healthy butler assembly with good gears now.
 
That's a pity, I was hoping for success.

My son 3d printed one of the gears (one soft plastic known to be unsuitable and one in metal) but NOT the one with the internal teeth. Is there no way that you can "persuade" the little gear to locate on the shaft and glue it in place,

We've put the project on hold as we've got other priorities.

Did the supplier pass any comment on what went wrong?

Sorry it didn't work out.

RayH
 
That's actually the next plan on my list (use loctitie/epoxy to jam the little gear to the shaft). If that doesn't work, then screw it, I'll just buy a used butler thing from ebay and be done with it. I really want to sell this car next year.

Octoclassic weren't sure what went wrong, but like I said...it's the teeth on the inside of the gear that was the problem.
 
Octoclassic kindly sent me another revised set of gears over the winter to try out free of charge, which was very kind of them.

Sadly the little one still wont fit over the splined motor shaft.

I'm going to try and use a file to open it up slightly and then see if that helps. I'll update if I can get anywhere with it.
 
Octoclassic kindly sent me another revised set of gears over the winter to try out free of charge, which was very kind of them.

Sadly the little one still wont fit over the splined motor shaft.

I'm going to try and use a file to open it up slightly and then see if that helps. I'll update if I can get anywhere with it.
Is that the one with the internal teeth?

I was recently with my son in his lab and we scanned one of those and he has printed it. He says that the problem is with the internal teeth - the SLT file was auto-created with a precision 3D scanner.

However, we reckon it might work with a bit of fine tuning - precision trimming of internal teeth, perhaps. I don't have an update yet but my printer will arrive soon so we'll have another go.

Also, he printed with a plastic that isn't suited to our application - just for experiment.

I shall try to print using ABS but it may be some while.

RayH
 
I am convinced I saw something on youtube where these gears were replaced with steel ones , I didn't pay much attention to it , it might have been someone who sent them away to have steel gears fitted. 🤷‍♂️ can't quite remember ...CarWizard maybe ?

There are many gear suppliers out there and MB will probably have used one of them . But I know from my own experience of trawling through many catalogues from gear suppliers it's a loooong haul to find the correct ones. Best of luck
 
Is that the one with the internal teeth?

I was recently with my son in his lab and we scanned one of those and he has printed it. He says that the problem is with the internal teeth - the SLT file was auto-created with a precision 3D scanner.

However, we reckon it might work with a bit of fine tuning - precision trimming of internal teeth, perhaps. I don't have an update yet but my printer will arrive soon so we'll have another go.

Also, he printed with a plastic that isn't suited to our application - just for experiment.

I shall try to print using ABS but it may be some while.

RayH

Indeed sir, the little one with the internal teeth. I think maybe with a bit of ghetto filing to open the teeth up a tad, it might slip over the shaft ok. But time vs work vs nappy changes isn't always easy to come by these days for me.

Keep us posted on your progress with the scanner. I'm willing to bet there are tons of people out there with failed gears and no solution other than to buy second hand butlers from ebay which would break at any time due to their age anyway.

I am convinced I saw something on youtube where these gears were replaced with steel ones , I didn't pay much attention to it , it might have been someone who sent them away to have steel gears fitted. 🤷‍♂️ can't quite remember ...CarWizard maybe ?

There are many gear suppliers out there and MB will probably have used one of them . But I know from my own experience of trawling through many catalogues from gear suppliers it's a loooong haul to find the correct ones. Best of luck

I've seen it too - I'm pretty sure somebody from this forum actually produced set run of steel gears several years ago. Ahem...fruitless now to find a supplier.
 
I think maybe with a bit of ghetto filing to open the teeth up a tad
Would is be out of the question to glue that internally toothed cog into place?

Or is a botch job raising its ugly head?

R
 

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