Marking OffSet Slot.IT Crown Gears

[BarkingSpyder]

Slot.IT OffSet Crown Gears are a challenge to keep track of, since they are all a neutral white Nylon color. YES – the tooth count (aka the “Z” number) is located in the valley between teeth and collar, but they are Still Very hard to find and read (need geezer goggles or magnifying glass).
The most prevalent organization method seems to be “pillboxes” with labels for the various sizes.
Marking with a fine-point Sharpie works Ok until you mount the gear, and between the lubes and your fingers, soon the marking fades.
…..
In addition; I have started engraving the Tooth count on the Collar.
Usually, all that is needed is the “ones place” number – since all are in the twenties (23, 24, 27, etc).
A $15 micro-engraver, aka. engraver-pen, are easy to find at Harbor Freight, Joann’s Fabric, Hobby Lobby etc.
….
To bad Slot.IT did not either (a) make the collar black/blue for off-set gears and used the same color scheme as the non-offset crowns; or (b) color-coded the Collars/shanks (leaving gears natural nylon)
(c) put the Tooth number (in a larger font) on the larger non-toothed back side of the crown.

[BarkingSpyder]

DIAMETERS OF POPULAR SLOT.IT GEARS

In the 1-24 world, a tool-guage is available to quickly identify the Tooth-count of a Spur or Crown gear.  This is helpful because some manufactures mold the Z-number into their gears, or encodes it into the Part number  (eg. 4834A, is a 48-pitch, 34 tooth, angled (12deg) gear), but Many do NOT.

I took this idea and measured Slot-IT Crowns. I found a consistent Diameter for Both color-coded (normal) crowns and White Offset crowns.

Since the tooth-count of Offset crowns are very hard to read (its small and molded into the land between the teeth/edge and the collar) an easy to use measuring system can be Helpful when trying to determine what Used gear is installed on your car (e.g. you did not keep detailed notes on every setup!)

23Z/PINK 13.5M      /* with 9z pinion, gear ratio – 2.56 Hot
24Z/GREEN 14M     /* 2.67
25Z/ORANGE 14.5M  /* 2.78
26Z/BLUE 15M  /* 2.89
27Z/BLACK 16M  /* 3.00   OEM / Mild

Just-for-Grins – the 1-24 gear guage is shown below for application of this concept.

https://www.vanguardspeedlab.com/products/gear-gauge

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