I yesterday rode my bike true snow… and the drive train felt very stiff. While recording for a friend whom i want to question of his thougthts on the problem.. i stupidly managed to ripp the belt off in the process. Beeing far from home and beeing cold i did another stupid thing – i rolled the belt back on like a chain. (Which the manual explicitly stated not to do). And now it has very visibel damage.
My suspicion is that snow puring out of the mud guard packed down in the groves of the belt and increased thereby the diameter of the sprokets. So the belt had way to mutch tention.
Besides that this drivetrain was indeed wory free for the last year.
Any one with similar experiences? Or ideas how to fix it… or other suspicions what could have went wrong?
by NmEter0
9 Comments
https://preview.redd.it/fj0g2cbqorbg1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=36b8cb69c6a98b5a08d193a58fd02977a53a4e5a
Here the packed down ice
Never had an issue with belts in the snow. But maybe you do and maybe the tension was the problem.
Another possibility is that the cold weather stiffened the grease inside the hub (is that an Alfine?) and caused an issue. If this is the case, opening up the hub and replacing with thinner oil/grease may be the solution. Good luck.
Grease inside the hub likely froze.
Yup, destroyed a belt with it. It was already old and I needed to exchange it, but it got destroyed.
Weird. I rode hundreds and hundreds of kilometers through (often deep) snow with Gates belt drives and never had any issues. Same with sand, mud, (sea) water – no issues.
I might be wrong but aren’t these belts made of some sort of rubber? Under very low temperatures it will stiffen up and lose flexibility, maybe even contract, increasing the tension. If you have a horizontal dropout you could give it a bit more slack to drop the tension a bit?
https://preview.redd.it/x8d3x2uozrbg1.png?width=3000&format=png&auto=webp&s=f233ebc1cf86985604c2a385f093b4ebfa7f74d2
wait a second is your thing in the back like a regular thing for chains?!?
and you or someone just slapped a belt on it?!?
I’ve had the same problem, I’ve snapped two belts in similar conditions . The snow packs into the teeth and messes up the tension. I don’t have a good solution outside of not riding in deep fresh snow.
It’s not a grease issue as others suggest.
Hub?