Festool PD 20/4E Quadrill: Gear switch issues

[sebsutherland]

Hi all,

This is my first Festool product (aside from a 2nd hand C12 - which is great) bought new from Axminster about one month ago.

The drill is great aside from the gear switch is extremely stiff and requires me to almost injure myself every time I want to change drill speeds. I'm finding that it's so stiff that it's basically unusable, which is not what you want from an expensive drill like this.

The only thing that could have possibly caused this is when I used a brush attachment on the drill to clean up some stonework and the drill got pretty dusty, but that surely shouldn't damage the drill?

Does anyone else have this issue with the drill? Given that it's my first Festool product I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to send it back.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Seb.

 

[AlexThePalex]

Given that it's my first Festool product I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to send it back.

If it does not work as advertised of course it is appropriate to send it back.

 

[TelcoRandy]

If it's anything like the PDC then it's common for the gearbox to have a lot of resistance when switching gears. There's lots of posts of the forum about this. As for the PD 20/4E, well I don't have any direct experience with that drill so I couldn't say. I would only assume that they're the same but I can't be sure (they don't sell these in North America unfortunately, if they did I would probably buy one).

- Randy

 

[Doug S]

On the PDC you have to blip the trigger sometimes when changing speed to help the gears mesh in.

 

[Wuffles]

On the PDC you have to blip the trigger sometimes when changing speed to help the gears mesh in.

Mine switches from 1 to 2 to 4 no problem. Trying to get it into 3 without it missing it entirely is a random game sometimes.

 

[Doug S]

Mine goes between speeds ok, actually better then it used to but sometimes does not sound quite right on speed 1. Sometimes it sounds a bit rough like something has not seated in properly but other times it's fine. I do wonder that with a 4 speed gearbox that maybe there is just a bit too much going on in there.

Doug

 

[Kev]

I have no problem switching gears. If it's that hard send it in to be fixed.

 

[DB10]

  If the drill switch worked fine and was quite smooth before your dusty stone work, then there lies the problem.
  I've had this before with an old Makita drill where the switch got so stiff it was unsuable after using it a lot with stone work. Dust and grit got under the switch. Because it was an older drill I took it apart and sprayed it with plenty WD40, good as new after that, but my drill was a few years old and not a few weeks old.
Your call but if it was me I would be putting a call into Festool.

 

[sebsutherland]

Thanks for all the responses,

It sounds like it's not meant to be so stiff so I'll give Festool a call.

Thanks again!

Seb.

 

[yetihunter]

It's common to need to run power drills while switching gears.