LJ4200 growning and paper jams

[tdsoup]

Original owner of HP LJ4200. Recently started to have grinding noise, seems like on right side, when powered on, and during printing from either manual tray or tray 2. Paper jam seems to be before the fuser as the toner is not fused to the paper.
Sort of fixed the problem with a rather hard tap to the right side of the printer. Grinding noise when away and jams stopped. Now it is back again after maybe 20 printed pages. Don't know the cycle usage, but it has only been used as a household printer, so limited actual use vs an office setting. But it is the main workhorse household printer.
This machine has never had a service reminder appear in LCD and no maintenance has been done to it, routine or otherwise.
From what I am reading the swing plate gear and this seems to be very similar to what I am experiencing.
Any and all help very much appreciated.

TDSOUP

[redcow]

Pull the fuser out and look at the inside of the chassis where the fuser gear was. Look for a lot of dark plastic dirt piled up by the dark gear.

If you see any dirt in there - replace the swing plate and fuser gear.

Print out a config page to get the page count. The maintenance count should be set for 225,000. However, rubber tends to dry out over time, so you should at least change the rollers. If you never changed the swing plate, don't start now. Get someone who has done it before.

[cs_steve]

Actually, there is a short-cut method for replacing the swing plate gear which is Doable for end users ...
http://www.printertechs.com/tech/assemblies/swingplate/swingplate1.php

RedCow is right, though ... if you're doing the "full replacement" where you don't just swap the problematic black gear, you'll want to have a technician install it. That is one of the more involved repairs on HP LaserJets...