I love the MZ-S. It's my go-to because I like to spot meter everything. Canons and Nikon's make everything a hassle to easily manually shoot. Anyway, I pulled the bottom plate off of mine to take a gander at the infamous gear, but I found that the motor resides in a different location than in my MZ-3 (which I also pulled the plate off of). I couldn't see the gear from the bottom. However, if you shine a flashlight down the gap behind the lens on the left and actuate the depth of field preview, you can see the gears. If you can see down at a shallow angle, there is hiding down there what I believe to be THE gear in question. It's hard to tell, but it looks black to me, meaning plastic. Maybe someone else can look, too and confirm.