The Texas Variator Massacre  By  onewheeldrive (Read 1,272 times)

What exactly happened ?

Here, my dear Watson, are my observations. 
1) The top set of rollers. Two of the rollers look different from the other four. If they are, and they were lighter than the other four, they would have caused an imbalance in the lateral forces on the variator, pushing the heavy side of the variator toward the drive pulley harder than the other side, causing:

2) The serious deformation of the variator bushing shown in the picture here:
c1.staticflickr.com/9/8856/17187730668_fa8213c37f_z.jpg

This lateral wobbling, happening at 7500 or more times per minute may have slammed the variator into the rollers, making them flat in spots and ruining their ability to roll, and might have destroyed the variator guide bushings.

3) At this point, that variator, sitting on the flattened portions of the rollers, was allowed to go too far down, allowing the back plate to touch the variator, cutting into it as shown here:
c1.staticflickr.com/9/8856/17187730668_fa8213c37f_z.jpg

Changing the rollers did no good because the damage to the bushing was done.



4) The metal on the back plate is allowed to move back and forth because the guides are worn or even gone at this point. The back plate may have even been able to slide under the guide bushings. They slam into the variator over and over until they shear off the guides, resulting in this mess of mangled metal.

Lacking further information, I think the first set of rollers might have been the root cause of this damage. While there is also the possibility that your variator I.D. was not square with the drive face, the only indication of trouble I see in these pictures is the two "odd" weights in the first set. It could be that the plastic is just molded over them at the their edges or that we are looking at the "back" of them and they are not just simple cylinders, but my weights are all simple cylinders, the same OD and ID at both ends.


EDIT: I blew the image up. His top set are even on both ends, but you can see in the fifth roller that it's just plastic hanging over the brass part. That leaves us with the likelihood that either his variator face was not square to the bushing, or his bushing was too big to start with. I had the same problem with a variator that flattened my weights and shredded my belt.
I have seen variators and bosses of different lengths and diameters before, where one variator wouldn't even fit on a boss from another set, so we have to be careful about checking the fit, as onewheeldrive noted in his last post.

I blew the image up. His top set are even on both ends, but you can see in the fifth roller that it's just plastic hanging over the brass part. That leaves us with the likelihood that either his variator face was not square to the bushing, or his bushing was too big to start with. I had the same problem with a variator that flattened my weights and shredded my belt. 

It reminded me of rcq's thread at first.

itistheride.boards.net/thread/7209/alley-right-dr-pulley-variators

I honestly don't know if I'm at fault here--- I mean obviously the damage could've been minimized by me, but this isn't something that I see in these forums, ever. Specifically the play between the boss and the variator. Not exactly ready to blame the variator either.

I agree. The "massacred variator" boss was a tighter fit in the replacement variator-- it felt too tight so I didn't use it. I tried both bosses just to see beforehand.

and i thought my massacred variator was bad, wow. i think i figured out why mine was destroyed. my crank has some play on the variator side. i think the added heat from a bad bearing caused mine to disintegrate.

i doubt that was your problem since it happened so fast but you might want to check that bearing anyway.