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I'm a fan of belt drive in theory, never actually tried it in real life.
When it works* its really quite nice. A bit 'softer' than a chain I think, almost like a cush drive on a motorcycle. One of the first longer rides I did had some riding on that silty sandy type of gravel that gets all over a chain and makes it run horribly, and you know you're never getting it running nicely again, no matter how fastidiously you clean the chain. The belt ran smooth as butter for the whole ride and ever since. Well...
*I'd changed the cranks on the bike to some Ultegra ht2 ones which required mounting the front pulley outside of the chainring tabs (the outer ring position) whereas the stock square taper cranks had mounted the pulley inside of the tabs.
It ran fine until I recently noticed that the pulley was being distorted (it's the lower end CDN stuff so the pulley is some kind of plastic/composite). The chainring tabs on the cranks were pressing into the pulley as can be seen by the indentations in the photo below. It turns out the pulley is flatter on one side than the other.
I didn't want to go back to the stock cranks so tried flipping the pulley so the flatter side was against the crank arm on the Ultegras but the belt derailed. The mounting face on the pulley is a bit offset so I put the derailment down to poor belt line since I'd flipped it. I tried grinding a little bit off the pulley where the dents are so it could fit flatter the original way around but I got a belt derailment again.
I'm presuming the pulley has gotten a bit worn from being used while misshapen so I've ordered a 'CDX' alloy pulley from Aliexpress to see how that runs. I have already purchased a spare genuine CDX belt so can fit that if needed.
With a chain and sprockets I think it'd be a lot easier to see what's at fault and obviously, cheaper to replace parts if required.
Of course, I can't really blame the belt drive system, it's been my fault for changing the cranks and not noticing either the misshapening of the pulley nor the differently shaped sides of it.
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M_V
Ta.
I thought the bosses on mine had part open ends, but they're definitely not offset enough to drill through without creating a seatstay hole :)
New project looks good btw. I'm a fan of belt drive in theory, never actually tried it in real life.