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Drive Belt Durability (Read 415 times)
Oldfeller--FSO
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Drive Belt Durability
01/25/10 at 12:05:52
 
Samlight, the belt is a heavy polyester cord (tire cord material) surrounded with very sturdy hard wear resistant thermoplastic.  

It is NOT a rubber belt at all.

Don't get trapped in rubber "v" belt style thinking -- simply run it until it shows a much more positive sign of failure.

We have belts that have gone nearly 100,000 miles -- have clearly outlived the engine itself.  We have belts in service that were damaged by a rock (have a hole in them) and are still running.

Your horizontal cracks in the cover plastic are not a sign of failure, they are simply a sign of use.   If you take the belt and flex it that way just about all our belts show little cracks in the bottoms of the ridges on the back side of the belt.  The belt was built that way with a rigid hard plastic material so as to make up the very sturdy teeth, so it needed the ridges to keep things fully flexible.  

The strands of cord provide all the stretch strength, the plastic makes the hard teeth, together they make up a VERY DURABLE belt.  The little cracks don't really affect this construction either way.

Run it, simply run it.
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« Last Edit: 07/14/12 at 10:46:42 by Oldfeller--FSO »  

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Re: replacement belt
Reply #1 - 01/26/10 at 09:39:27
 
Oldfeller--FSO wrote on 01/25/10 at 12:05:52:
Samlight, the belt is a heavy polyester cord (tire cord material) surrounded with very sturdy hard wear resistant thermoplastic.  

It is NOT a rubber belt at all.

Don't get trapped in rubber "v" belt style thinking -- simply run it until it shows a much more positive sign of failure.

We have belts that have gone nearly 100,000 miles -- have clearly outlived the engine itself.  We have belts in service that were damaged by a rock (have a hole in them) and are still running.

Your horizontal cracks in the cover plastic are not a sign of failure, they are simply a sign of use.   If you take the belt and flex it that way just about all our belts show little cracks in the bottoms of the ridges on the back side of the belt.  The belt was built that way with a rigid hard plastic material so as to make up the very sturdy teeth, so it needed the ridges to keep things fully flexible.  

The strands of cord provide all the stretch strength, the plastic makes the hard teeth, together they make up a VERY DURABLE belt.  The little cracks don't really affect this construction either way.

Run it, simply run it.


As much as I've read on this site, I don't think I've seen this much detail about our belts before.  Alot of things get repeated, and although this may be a repeat for some folks, I say thanks to Oldfeller.  Great info!   (I guess that's another good sign, we DON'T talk about the belts often, because they don't cause much trouble!)
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Oldfeller--FSO
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Re: replacement belt
Reply #2 - 01/26/10 at 10:59:55
 
As far as belt squeak goes, one of our Dragon riders posted that he beat this by beveling the edge of the belt with his 4 1/2 belt grinder while idling the bike in gear with the rear wheel raised (plastic material removed at teeth tips at an angle down to the flat portion where no material was removed).

I did this and I do +1 that the squeak is gone and also that the tooth material on our belts is some more tough stuff, I don't think steel would have been much tougher to remove.
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