Does your wheel pulley have 40 Teeth? If its one of my kits it is 36T, this is important because the larger the diameter of the wheel pulley the less teeth in mesh unless you increase center distance.
Yes, my wheel pulley has 40 teeth. Should I get a 36 teeth pulley?
a-ha! now we are getting to the bottom of this!
if you are interested to learn more about this please read;
if you keep the 40t wheel pulley you need a 16t motor pulley.
Okay…I noticed something and I needed to confirm it. I just went back and counted the teeth on my wheel pulley and it’s 36 teeth, not 40. I don’t know where I got 40 from. Motor pulley is 14 teeth.
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14/36 is what i’m running too. Have you triple checked for wheel pulley wobble? I had this one situation where I couldn’t figure out why my belts were wearing oddly then breaking. Every time i flipped it over and slowly turned the wheels everything looked like it was lining up perfectly. Turned out my wheel pulley wasn’t exactly centered and flat with the wheel and i wasn’t able to see it until i was looking for it while running the motors flat out on the bench.
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I think that may be my issue. I’ve look at it a dozen times and I can’t seem to get it right.
Just now though, I loosened the belt a lot then spun the wheel and it still makes the creaking noise. No matter what tension I have right now, it’ll make that noise.
Also note, I did rotate the wheels around recently, so it;ll be a bit different than a couple weeks ago.
@psychotiller yeah actually I have seen your thread on ES with the bearing tensioner. how did you mount it?
I drilled and tapped an 8mm hole in my mount. Then it was just a matter if putting a screw through the bearings.
well I just finished my belt tension idler pulley. Its pretty simple, just like you described @psychotiller. I drilled a 8mm hole and put a bolt with a bearing on it. My theory is that it will force more teeth in mesh on the small pulley. the traditional method of tension by moving the 2 pulleys apart doesn’t give optimal amount of teeth in mesh on the small pulley. sure making the pulley bigger will give you more teeth in mesh, but then you lose your gear reduction, and acceleration/torque/hill climbing etc…
inserting an idler in the middle of the 2 pulleys should help more teeth mesh in the smaller pulley.
I’ll give it a test ride and give some feedback tomorrow.
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This makes a lot of sense. I’m looking forward to your feedback. Please post pictures too. I put this on my todo list.
Nice! You should find that you lost the skip entirely. Also, since you now don’t have to tension the crap out of your belt your board will roll easier.
Wow what a ride! Acceleration is improved. Braking is improved. Hill climbing is improved. Under all normal riding belit slip is eliminated. And it seems to be quieter as well. I tried to make it slip by accelerating hard up a hill and i did manage to make it slip a little. But i had to really try to make it slip. And this in on a well worn belt as well. I will be making this simple mod to all my mounts now.
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Cool man. Is it a slot so you can adjust it?
no the idler itself isn’t slotted but the motor slides in and out in the traditional manner, so you adjust the tension that way.
Simple and effective, the way it should be. Might be something to keep in mind for the future if needed.