My husband and I recently went through hoops to try to figure out why our Whitfield pellet stove stopped feeding pellets. One of the things I did was take the cover off the gear box and remove all the cogs. When I did this I could see that one of the gears had worn teeth, so we’ve ordered a new gear box and motor.

I’ve read on a webpage that some people take apart their gear box without making a note of how everything fits together. Then they can’t get it back together and are forced to get a new one.

Since I took such careful notes, I thought I’d post here how to reassemble it in the hopes that it would be helpful for someone in the future.

By the way, you probably know this already, but the gearbox screws use a star screwdriver, not an allen wrench.

So here it is.

If you look at the gear pieces, each one has a big cog and also a little cog attached to it (except for the gigantor cog which is just one). I’m going to call the big cog the ‘maincog’ and the little cog the ‘subcog.’

First of all, take the gears and label them (just put them down on a piece of paper and write a number next to them) according to the following:

Gigantor cog.

Two gears with small flat subcogs. The one with the bigger maincog label as piece 3. The one with the smaller maincog label as piece 4.

A gear with a shaft as well as a big flat subcog. Label this piece 2.

Two gears with tall subcogs. Label the one with the bigger maincog piece 1. Label the one with the smaller maincog piece 5.

Here’s a picture that shows a birds eye view of the gears:

It’s hard to see the size of the subcogs in the above picture, so here’s an image at more of an angle. Note that the size of the maincogs is distorted below so that the larger maincogs look smaller:



Once you have the gears labeled, take a look at the gearbox. There’s a hole which I’m calling E and four shafts which I’ve labeled A – D in the picture below:

Now just put the pieces back in the following order. Use a light synthetic grease if you need more than what was already there and make sure you push the gears down snugly:

1. Put gigantor cog in the hole with the shaft up.
2. Put Piece 5 on shaft D, subcog up.
3. Put Piece 4 on Shaft C, maincog up.
4. Put Piece 3 also on Shaft C, subcog up.
5. Put Piece 2 on Shaft B, maincog up.
6. Put Piece 1 on Shaft A, maingcog up.

That’s it.