Thanks for your thoughts, Bruce. Here's how I set the gear distance. When I first removed the L engine, I took careful measurements of how far the gear protruded from aluminum crankcase. Look at the photo below. The gear is just under 3/16" from the aluminum ring (ignore the bronze bushing). This is NOT the correct distance for the gear. When I opened up the engine I found the set screw holding the bronze bushing had backed out and the gear and bushing pushed slightly into the crancase. Look at the photo again and focus on the gear blade near the base of the left red vertical line. The left 3/4 of the blade looks shiny while the right 1/4 looks dull. This happened because the left part contacted the planet gears in the hi/low but the dull part did not. In other words the gear wasn't in far enough. When I checked all this out I determined the gear should really be about 1/4" from the aluminum ring. This was also the same distance I measured when I bought a 2nd crankcase and gear from eBay, though I dont have pictures of that one. So I think the 1/4" dimension is pretty good. That's where I have it set now. But just in case I'm wrong I'm going to try to add more spacers to cut this back to 3/16". That's my thinking but I've been wrong many times before so we'll see.