I have a Kitchenaid Professional 6 Stand- up mixer. I'm attempting to replace the Worm follower gear that drives the main planetary drive shaft, but cannot figure out how to remove the original. Please help. Thanks. I have the same problem. Can anyone tell me how to remove the retaining pin?

I would give the "accept" to bestdarngood , if I were you..He has given the bets and complete solution there...That should work, if it doesnt. the the only recourse is a service center..

Here's a good demonstation on dissasemble and greasing KitchenAid mixers. Doesn't really get to specifics on the work gear but it shows how to get to it: http://www.artisanbreadbaking.com/discussions/kitchen-aid.htm

I found some instructions for doing this that should help you out, please let me know if you get stuck as I am more than happy to help you with whatever

Be sure that you have enough room to work on this before attempting it. The Powerhead is full of grease that is very messy, so make sure that you have paper towels on hand.

Also, while taking it apart, don’t loose any screws, put them into cups or even stick them into cardboard or anything to keep them from being lost.

First thing to do is to remove the Powerhead from the stand. This requires a (#4) Phillips head screw driver to remove the four machine screws. Be sure you have the right size screw driver, or you'll ruin the screws and never get it apart.

Next, remove the chrome trim ring (drip ring) from the planetary gear housing by carefully prying it off. You should be able to pull it off by hand but be careful not to bend it.

The planetary gear housing is pinned to an intermediate drive shaft with a steel pin. You'll need to clamp the powerhead up in a vise and then drive the pin out with a center punch and mallet. Look for a pair of small holes in the center of the planetary housing, on opposite sides of the intermediate drive shaft. It doesn't matter which way you drive the pin, but don't lose the pin.

Once the pin is out, the planetary gear housing should pull free. Use a pair of screwdrivers on opposite sides of the housing and gently pried it off. Go slow, the housing is cast metal and if your are too agressive, you can bend or break it.

Once the housing is off, just set it aside. You will see the planetary ring gear. You do NOT need to remove the ring gear, but you do need to remove the 5 or 6 screws that hold it in place, as these also hold the gear housing cover to the motor housing.

So, remove these screws with a standard slotted head screwdriver. Again, be sure you use the proper sized screw driver because you do NOT want to damage the heads of these screws.

There are four additional screws visible on the bottom of the powerhead. Remove these. You should now be able to carefully remove the gear housing cover from the motor housing. It has to come STRAIGHT off, or you will bend gear shafts and damage the housing, so be careful. If it appears to be binding, be sure you have found and removed all of the screws.

Once you have this off, you will see that the housing cover you just removed has the bevel gear and the worm gear assembly attached to it. There are other gears left inside the motor housing, but I did not have to mess with any of them, so if your trouble is there, or in the electrics, you are on your own.

The worm gear assembly is a metal tower about 3 inches tall. It contains a shaft with a pair of helical cut gears; a smaller steel one that is permanently affixed to it's shaft and a larger nylon gear that is pinned to the same shaft.

The nylon gear is designed to shred if the motor is overloaded (a nylon gear is cheap, a new motor is very expensive and takes a lot of work to replace). If your mixer stalled on a heavy load of bread dough, made a nasty noise and then the beater stopped turning but it sounds like the motor was still running (Clunk whirrr Clunk whirr Clunk...) this is probably what is broken. You have two options. If you are feeling brave, you can tear down the worm gear assembly and put in a new worm gear. If you feel competent to do this, you need no instructions from me. If not, but you've gotten this far, I'd suggest that you replace the entire worm gear assembly, because it is only ten bucks more and you won't have to worry about putting the gear and it's bushings in incorrectly.

The worm gear assembly is fastened to the gear housing cover with three short machine screws. Remove the assembly and either tear it down and replace the gear, or replace the entire assembly.

Examine your worm gear. If it is deformed, but appears that all of the teeth are "there" and just bent over, you may feel ok about not replacing the grease in the gear housing. Mine had one tooth broken off, but I was able to spot it in the grease and extract it. If you are not able to account for all of the pieces of the gear, you really should replace the grease because you don't want pieces of broken gear rattling around in there. Frankly, I took a chance by NOT replacing the grease, but I will be listening to my mixer very carefully.

Put everything back together in the reverse of how you took it apart and you should be good to go.

As you reassemble, be sure that you get the powercord strain relief properly back into it's little hole, and note that the back plate of the motor housing clips into the gear housing cover, and that if this is not properly reinstialled, your speed control won't work.

The total time to dismantle the mixer and remove the worm gear was about ten minutes. The total time to reassemble was about 5 minutes. The hardest part of the job was removing the pin that held the planetary gear housing to the intermediate shaft and the one that held the worm gear to it's shaft. In both cases, you need a way to securely clamp down an awkward shape so that you can bang on it with a hammer and center punch.

Check out the Kitchenaid Repair Clinic for help on this.