Playstation 1 Laser swap issues

Just acquired an SCPH 1000 (after 5 years!), guess what? You guessed it, the cheap plastic laser is toast (or the spindle motor, those were cheap too). That should be a simple repair but the problem is that the metal lasers have an extra ridge on the straight edge gear, this keeps causing the unit to jam. Any way to fix this?
Edit: Just tested, it is that godforsaken spindle motor, I think that cursed SCPH-5500 is about to become an organ donor rather than a repair project. Please continue with suggestions, someday I probably will need to replace this laser.

 

Why not just replace it with a BAM laser unit (from the PSone)?

Just remove the 2 screws on the top and swap the top plastic over and it will fit perfectly.

 

That is the problem, all metal lasers including the BAM have a minor change to the gear on the edge, on the plastic ones the bottom of each cog is open whereas on the metal ones the bottom edges are attached to a metal ridge See the ASCII rendition of the problem below. Unfortunately that ridge keeps jamming. I have never seen this happen on any other unit. I KNOW someone did a half-assed attempt to repair this unit before (some idiot used some old floppy drive mounting screws to reassemble the case). I suspect it might be the largest round white gear that is causing the problem, I think it might be out of tolerance. Another part to pull from the dead 5500

I I I I I (Plastic Laser)
I_I_I_I_I (Metal Laser)

 

I am not entirely sure what you are getting at.

I am talking about replacing the entire BAM assembly - including the laser and everything else. As the unit is completely replaced - if it works in a SCPH-10x it will work in a SCPH-100x too. There is no compatibility issues with cogs.

I think you are talking about just replacing the laser only?