novacafe said:
I have not checked the rest of the thread yet, but you said these bikes were raced....were they raced with the belt drives or converted to chain? (if possible) if so how durable were they for racing, any legal issues or other problems to overcome for racing? just curious because i never really thought about belt drives on race bikes, oh and the bikes looking good by the way!!!!
I raced my 305 with belt drive for 5 years. I ran about 10 weekends of racing a year which included practice and heat races on Saturdays and practice and finals on Sunday. This would amount to about 4 hours on track. My team also ran between 3 to 5 six hour endurance races a year with the same bike. Used the same belt the entire time and actually that belt is
the belt on my other project bike for my daughter, "Jett". (which you can link to from my signature if you'd like)
One of the guys I raced against, the guy that won everything, was welding on his bike and
burnt a small noch about a quarter of the way across his belt and raced it for another year without failure.
Like Caferay said for racing the chain would be more practical. If you wanted to change a
belt for some reason you would have to remove the swingarm. Also there wasn't a lot of
pulleys available to change gearing, although all but one road course we raced on the gearing was real close. The only place it was really wrong was Road America.
Eddie Lawson won the AMA 250 GP championship for Kawasaki using a belt drive bike, I believe IIRC in '82.
I would change all of my street bikes to belt if I could, Harley and I believe Victory use belts on several models. I am looking in to converting my Cagiva Alazzurra to belt drive now.
You don't get the driveline lash you get with chain, it's clean (like caferay said on a white bike it would be pretty bad), just make sure it is aligned and check the adjustment maybe once a year (and it probably won't need adjustment) and durability, going on 30 years (20+ sitting dormant) with
my daughters bike. Another advantage is rain has no effect on it, try that with a chain.