When I took the assembly out of my Vista to clean and lube it the gears disengaged from each because of the spring action. I tried to figure out exactly how they go together again, but wanted to see if anyone else had experience with this? I'm pretty sure that the left and right hand plastic rollers should be at roughly the same height when the assembly is horizontal, but that isn't easy to see accurately, so I engaged the gears so that the first tooth on the left hand gear in the upper left corner of the picture engages with the first tooth on the right hand gear in the upper right corner of the picture. That seems to make sense, but it doesn't really make sense that there is much more gear left on the right gear that would never engage with any opposite teeth (bottom center of the picture...). Am I over-thinking this?

Thanks, Tom

 

Look at the wear pattern on the teeth to see if there is a clue as to the original fitment.

 

Thanks. I checked, but it's hard to really see any wear pattern.

 

You need to match the lines on both sides to the lines on the center bracket.

 

Wow. That makes sense. Thank you! I would have had it wrong and I'm glad I didn't install that whole assembly back into the tail gate with the gears wrong :-)

It's still weird that the gears don't have the same number of teeth on both sides. The only thing I can think of is that they are used for different applications?....

The only problem is I'm not sure how the lines line up. There are two lines (one long and one short) on the right hand side gear. Those could line up with the equal length marks on the center bracket. But which line do I use to line up with the single mark on the left side of the bracket? The longest line in the center of the three lines on the left hand gear?...

 

Did I get the right way to mesh the gears now?...

 

Looks good to me.

 

Ok. Thanks man. I still have no idea why one hear would have more teeth on either end since they'd never engage with anything anyway, but I should be back in business. It'll be nice to get car parts back out of my living room and onto the car :-)