What a mess. After 7 weeks or more of back and forth emails, shipments, telephone calls and now a total of 6 trucks, only one set did not have split gears. I also went to all my LHS and looked at all the new Shay's and Climaxes. Without exception they all had split gears or split CV joint input shafts. Finally yesterday I got one front truck with one good gear, along with the only good gear I had, I gave up (they have sent me trucks 4 times) and fixed the dang thing myself as I had to use stuff from some of the bad trucks to fix this. The solution from my end involves drilling out the gears or input shafts to 0.052" and then CA the gear to the shaft with slow setting so you can adjust it before it sets. There is still friction fit at the 0.052" just not enough to hold under stress. Finally I have managed to make one mold that produces decent gears in casting resin. I could use a couple beta testers for the gears to see how they work for folks besides me. If you are interested and in the USA, I will send out to the first 5 folks that contact me a full set of the resin gears to try. I will even pay the shipment! The only requirement is that you provide me with feedback about how they do. I have no idea how long they will last or even if they will work. I had to send back all the other trucks or I would have tried modifying a set to just exchange out. So if you are interested, please drop an email to me: jack@scalemodelbuilder.net I will pick the five from timestamps on the email. Please feel you are competent enough to change these out, there is a trick or two. The biggest and most exciting news is that bachmann finally has recognized the problem and has a fix estimated to "arrive in the spring"....per their USA parts Manager.
Yikes. This is sad. A shame for a buyer to go through such contortions. This has been a known problem for a while. It's about time they recognized and reacted. Boxcab E50
Bachmann's On30 offerings are pretty universally gorgeous on the outside. It's too bad that they use such shoddy components on the inside.
Contact Dave at NWSL. He has designed and selling new gears for the HO Spectrum Shay. I have some emails from him and he has been researching new gears for the ON30 Shay and HO Climax. In a couple other forums I have read about happy people refitting their HO Shays. A couple years ago at most, someone sent him their Shay with cracked gears as a test bed and Dave came up with steel gears in a relatively short time. Bachmann has to deal with China companies and you can see substandard stuff coming out of China at times. http://www.nwsl.com/ For some reason, his new NWSL site does not reflect the new Shay Gears or I cannot find it right now. There is a contact page and he does respond to email. Lex
Hello Jack28, I had the same problem with my 2 shays. Backmann sent me all 3 trucks for both of my shays and they all had cracked gears. I went with NWSL gears which are working fine. I now have 2 extra sets of trucks with cracked gears. I will be glade to give your gears a try. by the way, mine are HO 3-truck shays. Jim
After posting my message, I sent an email to Dave at NWSL. Below is the message and his answer. Please note, I have no comments about Bachmann. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Dave Someone in a mrr forum was mentioning Shay gears for the ON30. I told him you were working on it but when I went to your NWSL site, I saw nothing about the issue or even any reference to your Shay HO gears. Have you dropped this project? I do read about happy people with the new HO gears. I do not want to give people false hope. Thanks. Lex Hi Lex The On30 gears, for both the Climax and Shay, are a definite go. We should have the HO Climax gears done here in a few weeks, then it's on to the On30 gears. Thanks! Dave Rygmyr NorthWest Short Line (http://www.nwsl.com) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NWSL, (previous and present owners), have been saving us for years. They should get an award of some kind for reinforcing the hobby.
The below link goes back at least a year ago. NWSL New Owners I just wish more people would contact Dave. He has done a lot in a short time with this Shay project. Please spread the word though other forums. I will make note though, I did post this info some months ago in the Zealot.com forum and the geezer who owns it banned me. In fact, he banned my IP address so I could not even read the forums. Go figure. Lex
I (as usual :thumbs_down need to clear up what I mean/said/did. Yep, been in contact with NWSL. Yep, did change out the gears on a HO shay (I bought the gears and then the shay). Yep, talking about On30. No, did not want to wait for NWSL so working on my own temporary solution. They said the soonest was late next summer for shay gears. No the HO gears will not interchange. Yesirreee, they look awesome on the outside, but wow, they sure are mechanically challenged when it comes to parts quality. I still have not gotten as far as casting metal. That is next. I just hope newbies see this and move over to something that will not disappoint them right away like this did to me. Fortunately I am persistent, and I can see where many folks would just sit the shay on the shelf and give up.
Do these problems plague Bachmann's On30 releases other than the Climax and the Shay? I have been considering getting one of the 2-6-6-2's but if I am going to have to replace cracked gears I may wait.
Unfortunately, cracked gears are not uncommon with some Bachmann locos.. I belong to a bunch of mrr forums, including the Bachmann forum, and I have seen this issue with the 2-6-6-2. I recently sent back a Spectrum two motor HO 44 ton with a cracked gear. The loco is being replaced for $10.00. I had to pull my decoder that I put in and restore it to DC operation. Lex
