as you all know watching a shay run on a layout is a marvel to watch the reciprocating drive and all its various parts!
but that crankshaft has a weak point right where the double brass drive gears and the metal stud anchoring it and the piston rod and the crankshafts flat counter weights together as in time mine literally twisted itself in two!
thanks to a windows 10 crash I lost the email of a fellow ogr member whom offered his help to you whomever you are I thank you for offering me help with this issue.
now after a looooooooooooooooooooong hiatus I took the bull by the horns and sawed the remaining rod off flush with the crankshafts flat counter weight and using a pin vise and a #65 drill bit made a pilot hole in each end of the broken metal rod and kept enlarging the hole until I reached a 7/64" drill bit all of this is by holding the flat area of crankshaft in my fingers as afraid to use a vise for fear of breaking the plastic/delrin it is not very thick and not sure what they used to make the crankshaft assembly.
I measured the metal rod I sawed off it was close to 1\8" so went to home depot and found a 1/8" round cold rolled rod unfortunately smallest length was 3' !!
I do not have a lathe nor know how to use one so by hand I slowly filed the end of the 1/8" rod until it was a snug friction fit that was the easy part, as then I had to cut that to 5/16" long and then hold in a pliers so I could file the other end not an easy thing to do!!
I inserted rod into one end of crankshaft counter weight and tapped using pliers until firmly in place then took piston rod and slid onto the metal rod opposite end of crankshaft and in a easy slow twisting motion inserted rod into the opposite end of crankshaft counter weight and kept up until I achieved a total width of 7/32" outside diameter of the crankshafts flat counter weights and both counter weights lined up.
I left nothing to chance so I added a drop of zap a gap glue to each outside end of metal rod hopefully that will aid in keeping things firmly connected and working.
this is not a repair for the faint of heart to try, but seeing the part/parts are not available from Lionel any longer I either attempted this repair or had a mid level cost shelf queen that looked pretty!
I still am unsure as to exact cause of this failure all I can tell you is if your shay starts jerking for no apparent reason kill all power quickly and take a look see at the removable crankshaft assembly especially at both sides where the brass gears are located as that is where mine broke.
Minus my labor am retired so time is free ha ha and cost of the rod $3 and a few pennies a pretty cheap fix by todays repair costs!
hope this might help others and no I did not take any pictures as things are so small I doubt without a macro lense my camera would show a clear shot of the entire small parts being built and installed.
