Slipping Gears?
 

I didn't know exactly where to post this question, but since it's happening on my Catrike Villager (with Bosch e-Assist FWIW), I'm posting it here.

While most of my rear gears on the derailleur shift nice and smooth, the transition on a few of the low gears (around 4-3 or 3-2) "skips" when I shift down (for want of a better word). It doesn't "find it's place" immediately like it does in the higher gears, and I end up spinning the pedals for 1 or 2 rotations until it finally. finds the right gear. Is this type of behavior fairly normal for a derailleur, or can it be adjusted so ALL gears shift smoothly up and down? The trike only has about 700 miles on it.

Thanks!
Bert

All gears should shift smoothly. It sounds like the derailleur is a bit out of adjustment.

There are lots of online videos on how to adjust your SRAM rear derailleur. Here is one from SRAM https://support.sram.com/hc/en-us/ar...eur-correctly-

Pay particular attention to the 'B' adjustment, which adjusts how far away from the cassette the upper pulley rides. If it is too far away from the cassette gerars, it will cause sluggish shifting even if the indexing is set correctly.

Look for videos on trouble-shooting such shifting problems. That said, the first things I looked at as a bike mechanic diagnosing such shifting problems were (a) inner and outer limit and cable adjustment (e.g., in case someone who didn't know better had monkeyed with those), (b) cable and housing condition (looking for kinks, grit, and lack of lubrication), and (c) derailleur hanger alignment (if the bike ever fell over on its right side, the hanger might have bent, resulting in a deterioration in shifting performance and the possibility of the derailleur running into and ripping out spokes and/or breaking the dropout and/or the rider crashing).

Troubleshooting:
Is this mostly on the "upshift" to a smaller cog, or also happening when downshifting to the next bigger cog?
Has it gotten worse, or was it like this from the beginning?

~~~
Many years ago, I reattached the shift cable to the wrong side of the clamp bolt on the rear derailleur. Then I could only get half of the gears to shift cleanly, either the larger side or the smaller side. It took me a long time to find the problem!
So, if it's been like that from the start, the derailleur may never have been set up correctly.

The problem is mostly downshifting to the biggest cogs. On the opposite end it simply refuses to shift to the lowest cog. IOW words the lever moves to that highest gear, but the chain doesn't change gears. In effect, I'm limited on both ends. I'm living with it now, but I guess that I'll have it serviced come springtime (unless I ride more frequently than expected in the upcoming cold weather.)

You need to find an adjustment video on Youtube. Suffering with poor shifting all winter is not a good option when you could fix it in 10 minutes.