Trash compactor started making "bumping" sounds when the RAM went through a cycle and tried to come back up. Finally, one day heard a "pop" went the RAM traveled to the bottom. The gear broke in half. Purchased the gear parts "KIT" online and repair took 15 minutes. Easy to do. Unfortunately, this was not only problem. The "cause" of the gear breaking was the Momentary Start/Stop Switch was bad. It's failure led to the main switch not working. The unit could not tell when the RAM had reached the top of it's cycle. The other problem was that I didn't put trash in the compactor. Suggest HIGHLY to never operate the unit's RAM mechanism without the compactor being at least 1/2 full per the instruction manual. Running it empty can cause a major problem, such as the gear breaking/stripping.
Moved the compactor out from under cabinet, laid it on it's side, removed bottom casing (two nuts front, three back), remove compression pin from small drive gear shart, replace new small drive gear and install compression pin, loosen motor mounts to allow large gear replacement, remove circlip holding large drive gear to shaft, remove and repace damaged gear, set gear clearance and tighten motor mounts, grease gears, replace bottom casing. .
Replaced the gear and unit worked execpt the plunger hit the side of the garbage container. This appears the be the reason the gear broke in the first place. Defective assembly from the factory.
To correct I had to remove the newly installed gear system remove inside cardboard side cover, Remove the screws that hold the bearing for the lift screw so I could remove the chain. After removing the chain I could adjust the plunger to be level and not hit the side of the garbage container on its way down.
