Hell’s Bells! I actually found my 30 year old + MDC Shay loco. It was hiding in an old display cabinet. I need to see if it still runs. Your build thread has renewed my interest. Funny how things work sometimes. The winch gearing was from an old photo and I thought it looked cool.
Well, mines not running yet! If I can make mine look half as good as yours I'll be very happy indeed. I especially like the winch up front. Did you model a specific Shay? As for mine, I installed the trucks onto the frame today, and the dog bones are all connected. But there's something I need to take care of, it's bucking a bit on the track. I think it's the dog bones, they are a bit tight in their sockets coming off the bull gear and causing the trucks to buck (I think). No time to look more into it this weekend, so I'll figure it out over the course of the week before moving on.
I had Shay Fever back in the late ‘80s early ‘90s and had some books about them. This was modeled after a photo I saw in one of my books and it grabbed my attention like no other. I need to set up a section of non DCC track to see if it still operates. Following your build thread with interest.
Another update, and it's gonna seem like I've done nothing much Well, okay, so this week I've not had much time to work on it, but that changed a bit this weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn't to get much further. I attached the trucks to the frame, and now the whole thing was able to run back and forth, as long as I supplied electricity directly to the motor - no power pickups yet! But that's when I started being rather unhappy about the performance. Really, the biggest problem was that it ran smoothly in reverse, but would be stuttering when going forward. That was the start of many hours of trouble-shooting I started with the gearbox, and really, that one was annoying. As seen in my first videos, we can hear some sort of resonance vibration appearing at about 2/3rd throttle. And I think the major reason for this is that I over-sanded the inside of the gear case, and not having the correct sized reamer, I did my best with sub-par tools and over-reamed the axle holes. Basically, just loose fitting gears. Well, I solved this by stealing the gear case from the three-truck shay and starting over. So note to self, before I start on the three-truck Shay, I'll need a new gear box case I also solved the whole reamer issue by buying a Bead Reamer from Michaels - the right size for the hols here, and it's some diamond encrusted tool. Worked great! With that solved (and a noticeably quieter gearbox), I turned to the trucks. I added two more thrust washers to the jackshaft in each truck, essentially doubling the number and removing unwanted slop in the jackshaft (Note to self, I need more thrust washers for the three truck build ). With that done, it was easier to hear that with each revolution of the wheels, it was binding ever so slightly in reverse. I finally figured out that it might be the worms on the jackshaft, so I took those out and sanded the worm "channels" with 800 and 1200 grit wet sandpaper. I also removed excess solder around the jackshaft and worms that may have been causing them to turn less than round. With all that, this is what I got! It's loud, but completely acceptable to me because it runs smoothly. The boiler isn't sanded yet and was just placed on the frame (not screwed on) to add some weight. But yeah, I think it runs fine for what it is. In reverse I did not give it full power (you can briefly see about how much power was given on the Kato power pack), and I think I like that speed (maybe 9-11 mph) - I don't think I'll ever run it much faster than that. If I do give it full power it becomes more of a coffee grinder. And then just for the fun of it... I'm happy about how slow I can get it running Anyway, so I can finally start moving forward. It was super important to me to get the gearbox and basic trucks running as close to perfect as I could get them before moving on to the power pickups and then the driveshafts. That should be coming next! Enjoy!
Wow! It's great how it can crawl so slowly and smoothly. Great work! (you're really spoiling us kids with all those videos - on a real eye candy sugar buzz!)
OK, how many have searched Ebay for one of these recently cause of Stephane's post, raise your hands!! (besides me, lol!)
I already have two... ... those buggers are addictive... One's a kit in progress, the other an assembled one sitting under glass looking pretty. The former is a testbed for fixes to be added to the latter. It's obvious this thread is supplying fodder to my brain.
I'm glad you're all enjoying this! It's a fun kit, but finicky. A ton of work to get it running smoothly, and it's difficult to figure out what causes the little issues the crop up. I'm not sure I would have got it working so well without the handbook - though I need to be careful here, it's running okay right now, but it's not finished, hopefully it still works smoothly after getting the drive line built! I'm hoping to have a new update tomorrow night maybe. I spent the entire afternoon on power pickup and only have one side of one truck done . Turns out to be rather more difficult than anticipated! You know, I'm likely the youngest one here I was six years old when this kit first appeared!
Ah, here's an update! I spent some time taking the side frame parts off the sprues, and then taking some of the flash off. In the above picture I finally got to use my reamers I had so much trouble getting, and wow, it did nice work. Basically, there are "caps that attach to the sideframe and that hole the drive shafts in place. Well, the molding is so-so and the holes aren't round. Reaming them out is necessary so that the shafts turn freely. Then on to my current nightmare! The electrical pickups. The pickups that come with the kit are terrible, and everyone including the Handbook say to replace them. In the Handbook, the two-truck shay is built 99% stock, the only thing he changes are the pickups because they are that bad. However my issue is that the replacement parts come from a company that no longer exists. So I need to make my own. And unfortunately, all I could find was 0.009" thickness Phosphor Bronze. I really need some thinner than that. So how to go about cutting them? The laser cutter!!! hahaha, no, of course not, my little laser cutter can't cut metal. But I used a sharpie to color the phosphor bronze, and used it to draw a cutting template onto the sheet. The actual cutting was done by hand with a part of scissors. Making the holes was not easy, I messed up the first batch when the drill bit went everywhere except the middle of the hole. So the second batch, I instead make a 1/16" hole roughly centred and with a Dremel and then the reamer I enlarged the holes to the edges of the laser cutter marks. Then using first a small grinding wheel, and then whatever wheel this is on the Dremel I smoothed the edges and polished the surface. I ended up leaving more at the top so that I can later bend it over. And above is what it looks like! Not too bad no? and I have a tab to solder the wire as well. Except it doesn't work. But my wife is calling me up to dinner now, so more on what's wrong later!
Alright, so what's wrong is that it's too tight. The thicker phosphor bronze fingers are pushing too much on the backs of the wheels, and that's causing too much friction. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to work on this until Thursday late afternoon, after work. That will give me time to think up a solution. Maybe make the fingers thinner, or curve them to reduce the contact area? The handbook said to use 0.003" phosphor bronze, but again, seems to be only available from clover house, which no longer exists. This 0.008" is the best I could find.
A new progress post! So I did not get to work on my Shay all week due to work, ants, moths and my daughters' birthday! This afternoon though was nice, and got some good progress. First, turns out that the phosphor bronze pieces I already made are going to be alright.... The issue was that there was just too much contact area of the wipers on the back of wheels, and too tight a fit. So with some strategic bending, I manages to get only the tips of wipers to have good contact with the wheels. I used my multimeter to check continuity from both rails to the top of the pickups where I will solder the wires, and it's looking good. Plus, with the trucks mounted back on the frame, I tested with power and there's just the right amount of friction. whew! that's out of the way. Next was the part that I think I was dreading the most, the drive lines. I did not take many pictures here, because it's basically the same as the instructions, and it's quite tricky. Basically, there are a lot of really tiny parts that need to be trimmed of any flash, and then assembled onto the drive line. Here above we can see that the front truck is now fully assembled, and I did test it with power, and no binding at all up to this point. I used all the tricks of the Handbook, but most of them are not visible (mostly it's strategic carving of the inside of the universal forks and the universal caps to allow more freedom of movement). Other Handbook changes can be seen above, the holes in the bottoms of the trucks are added to ease lubrication of the worm gears without disassembling everything, and I think I already mentioned it, but the bottom of the gear box is opened. Apparently if this is not done, it can catch on frogs and the like, and again, eases lubrication of the bull gear. On the other hand, the tiny blue square of vinyl I added temporarily to keep the bolster pin from falling out each time I take the truck on and off the frame! This is where I'm at now, the rear drive line is assembled, and ready to be inserted into the truck and adjusted. The front driveline is nearly the same, just different spacing. Also note that as per the Handbook, I cut the gears off the outside gear. So each truck only has a single gear that meshed with the wheels. This is to make it much easier to coordinate everything. That's it for now!
That's one long-haul project with lots of minutiae that need attention, kudos! I'm taking lots of mental notes. Hope my brain doesn't spill over! Keep it up.
