Looking for some advice... This is my old MakerGear hotend.

This looks identical to the one that originally came on my Solidoodle2. You might check their replacement parts to see if their hotend would work.

http://store.solidoodle.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=63_66&product_id=59

Like a screw drive? I was wondering if anyone had tried that…

That’s just what I had in mind (although I hadn’t thought about the second nut for counter torque, very clever!)