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The club where I run has a class for 50s F1 cars and we run both Scaley and Cartrix cars. I had run both a scaley Ferrari 375 and a scaley Masser with good results. Note, our club runs magnet racing and the legal max mag force for 50s F1 is 100 Grams. I looked at some Cartrix cars and thought that the rear motor position might be better than the front motor of the scaley so I got a Cartrix Talbot Largo with an FF motor and was quite happy with the results. Well time went by and I wondered about getting a cartrix or two that used the FC 130 in the rear position and bought a Maserati and have had nothing but problems with gear mesh problems. (Note I also bought a second cartrix with the FC 130 and had the same problem. Now is where the problem gets worse. I talked to the president of the club and he agreed that changing the crown to a Slot it gear with the same ratio would be allowed because of lack of spare parts for the Cartrix. Now I take the car apart and find that the rear axle is not the same as a slot it and to replace the gear you would have to replace the complete rear end assembly.

Have any of you had the same problem with these cars and what was your solution? I understand that I can replace the rear end and use after market rims and tires but this seems a bit extreme. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dill out the gear or sleeve the axel depending which issue you have....

I can't help your with your crown gear issue, but I've had several Catrix cars that had a split pinion gear. One was hard to see, and it still was intact enough to run the car, but it sounded like it had a major gear mesh issue. Worth giving the pinion gear a good look.

I have also heard of the split pinion issue before.

Another thing to check...using very good eyes or some sort of magnification is for any plastic flash in the motor shaft slot on the crown.
Sometimes it is on the edge and other times it is in one or two spots on the crown groove sidewall.

I have quite a few Cartix cars - we run them with BWA motors - so I usually put a new pinion on the BWA
Split pinions is an issue with some of these cars as mentioned. The other thing you can do is run the car while holding a flame from a BBQ lighter on the crown gear - this momentarily softens it up a little (too much and it will melt) and smooths out any rough noises. Or you can use a fine grinding paste to improve the smoothness of the mesh.