My new shay has a funny problem that may go away after breaking in or may get worse. It will creep so slow in reverse it is almost imperceptable. Forward though is another matter. It stays put until the throttle is increased way more than is required in reverse. Then it jumps and goes on its merry way. It doesn’t creep as slowly either.
Do they all do this? Can I adjust (or should I adjust) a CV to compensate? Should I lubricate or are they well oiled at the factory?
I would first try cleaning wheels and track to make sure they arnt the problem. If that doesnt work, I think its a problem with the shay itself.
Not a problem that I have noticed on my Shay. After the mandatory gear-replacement and replacing a cable that had worn against the gear, it runs like a dream.
Yours must be one of the newer Shays – I have 3 of the original ones that I had to put my own sound decoders into. None of them exhibit the problem you are having, and none of them have had a cracked gear or needed to have gears replaced. All 3 run very smoothly in both directions and will creep at a nearly imperceptible speed of about one crosstie per minute.
Check each wheelset to see if turns freely. If it turns you probably have cracked gears on the drive shaft. NWSL sells a repair kit to replace the gears. They supply good instructions but requires some skill. Just changed the gears on my Shay and it runs like a top.
Take the “engine” off the side (secured by two screws behind the crankshaft) and make sure it turns abolutely freely in both directions. Also check each truck individually for any possible binding. If any gears are split, they shouldn’t be hard to spot.
If nothing you try works and everything looks good, just keep running it, and the problem should work itself out eventually.
My Shay gets a low speed of 1.25 scale MPH (about 0.25" per second) on pure DC. With a pulse signal, it can get much lower.