Pellet Stove auger motor junk

My first Whitfield Advantage II-T stove auger motor lasted 11 years. That's after 5 years when I found out the original motor may have had a design fault as the rear washer wore away since it was tilted back.  This allowed the motor gear to miss the first gear in the auger.  This caused intermittert pellet feed until it finally lost contact with the first gear alltogether.  A $.06 fiber washer behind the motor fixed that for some 5 more years.

I replaced that motor when the first gear (fiber) had worn teeth in Jan. 2012.  I was replaced with a Merkle-Korff auger motor.  Don't know the price or exactly where I got it (E-Bay or Amazon).   Fast forward to March 2013 and I return home to a dead stove.  Still full of fuel I hit the start button and hear grinding.  After seeing there are no pellets dropping or seeing the auger turn, I found two other auger motors I got off E-bay back in 2009.  I think a store was going out of business and bought two as they were cheap ($50).  They are only marked ECM and have two wires rather then lugs connnectors.  One RPM, clockwise rotatin and in 5 min I had the replacement on and running.  This motor was silent.  Something I cannot say about the Merkle-Korff.  In 15 min I had heat from the pellet stove again.

I thought the outside armature was off the main shaft as it seem to vibrate in the motor.  Taking it apart I find the problem.  Junk !

The first gear is fiber (reddish gear), all the rest are metal...
why ? ?

First, to open the auger gear box company put on two fancy security bolts.  One requiring a pretty special allen wrench with a hole in it (you can buy the bits to unscrew them at various stores).  BUT since there is no recessed hole for this bolt, a pair of long nose plires did the trick.. some safety bolts !

If you need to see which gear goes where.. try this shot.  This MAY be the same as your 1 RPM auger motor.. There are washers everywhere under the grease.

The auger motor's gear comes up from where that copper spot on the left, just below the reddish gear that is stripped.   I think this grease is too thick on this one. Should be using the grease they use on car joints.  You can get a tube of that at any auto store.  There should be a grease fitting on these and an overflow screw.  Once a year undo the overflow screw and use a grease gun until the grease comes out.  Then you know it's everywhere. 

Most of these cases for other stoves are identical, I bet they all come from the same company (or two).. just stamp on your company's name (like Sears does with their power tools) and sell them at 100% profit.  All you would need to do is change the first two gears to change the rotation speed/and or rotate motor coil.  Some say just turn around the motor coil and everything else would be the same.  I see these on E-bay and Amazon. The motors are different on depending on maker, still the cases are the same.  Some now have sealed motor bearings and sealed main gear backs. 

So the vibrating was just the motor jumping around, trying to grab the stripped gear.  Every gear is metal but the first gear.. go figure.  My original lasted 11 years, and that had a fiber first gear too.  This Merkle-Korff auger motor only lasted 14 months.  It could be it was never right in the first place, maybe that's why it was always noisy in the first place.  Everything had grease on it, but note how thick this grease is...