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Post by phatboy on May 2, 2016 5:00:12 GMT -5
My scooter belt shredded. When I got it taken apart I found my variator was stuck in the closed position (high gear). It is binding on the boss. No belt fragments in the variator, the boss shows score marks, I think the variator was just crap. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is you don't lube the boss, nor should you ever need to. So if true I will be replacing the variator. It was a cheap china variator, lesson learned and I will get something better.
Thing is, it seemed fine otherwise, other than the slow takeoff. I just checked the belt recently and it seemed OK, initially some dust at 15 miles but didn't look worse at 30 miles so I stopped checking. The belt only had about 50 miles on it total. It was a china belt, but still. 50 miles?
So ... what happened here?
Defective variator that caused early failure of the belt?
Or, this defect in the variator should have no siginificant effect on the belt's life, and the belt was also just plain defective?
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Post by gy6er on May 2, 2016 9:44:01 GMT -5
I had a variator boss get welded to the gear. Mess,I'm lucky I didden't hurt my crank. The only thing I saw as a cause was the boss inner had melted spot on it or something. Sorry the backing plate and boss got stuck together.
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Post by rockynv on May 2, 2016 12:16:00 GMT -5
The center bore of the variator should be permanently lubricated and should never be cleaned with a solvent or all the lubrcation can end up being removed. At best you wipe the boss down with an oily rag before assembly.
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Post by phatboy on May 2, 2016 16:13:44 GMT -5
OK, so definitely getting a new variator, not going to try to lube this one.
But I still wonder if the stuck variator could have shredded the belt, or if there was another reason for that.
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Post by rockynv on May 3, 2016 23:49:19 GMT -5
If it was stuck open then the belt slipping at high speed would have shredded it but closed would have prevented that and should have only impacted performance. The condition of the drive faces on the other hand could have shredded the belt especially if with the variator stuck closed there was a ridge in the clutches drive face that the belt was constantly riding halfway on. The condition of the CVT air filter also can greatly reduce belt life if its clogged it will cause the belt to overheat and fail and if missing depending on the environment it can allow enough dirt into the CVT case to cause the variator or clutch faces to jamb and lead to belt failure. Mind you I am currently riding an Aprilia which sees belt life of 12,000 to 15,000 miles when the filter and CVT is kept pristinely clean.
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Post by phatboy on May 4, 2016 2:39:21 GMT -5
Hmm, well I need to check that, I had no idea there was a CVT air filter. Overheating in there could've been my problem the whole time. I suspected it might be hot in there, by the way it acted up after hill climbs. Also I saw some smoke coming out after the belt failure.
The variator was stuck closed but I was able to free it from the boss by hand so it wasn't welded to it, there is a chance it stuck open as well at one time or another. I think the belt didn't fail suddenly, the last time I started the bike the starter sounded weird. There must have been belt fragments in the starter gear already.
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