[KSagal]

It may interest some here that the original gen 1 gear boxes were manufactured to specs from Segway by an outside company for Segway.

That company went out of business. After that, the gear boxes were manufactured in house. I suspect they still jobbed out the actual gear and shaft production, but all was assembled in house.

The original i2 gear box had a wheel flange that was not robust enough, and bent wheel flanges on the outside of the output shaft were common enough, so a hardened and more robust wheel flange was part of the improved gear box. I am not aware of any internal changes (like some shafts being hardened on later versions.)

Also, there has been a great deal of discussion over the years about the relative noise of the gear boxes. Some are quieter than others, and generally speaking, those of us who have owned several generations of segways have said that the gear noise on the i2 was louder than the gen 1. This is not always a function of miles however. Some have reported relatively new units with louder noises, and high mileage units that were quieter.

And for the record, I endorse any owner of any device doing anything they want to that device. I surely have modified many of the items I have owned to suit my taste. I have said this many times. But do not confuse this endorsement with my agreeing that the need to modify is not egocentric. Surely all of my modifications were, and will continue to be. Sometimes I will say and may feel it will improve the technical capacity of a given device, and it may be so, but it is always egocentric. And by my reckoning, that is not a bad word, or a bad thing.