Zel's Motoring Adventures...Volvo, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 13/11.

[Daviemck2006]

"super sausage cafe" 
I dont know if a pair of tights would be robust enough to bodge a Model 70 belt, but maybe a chain of sausages might?

And Zel could be cooking dinner whilst driving home

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk

[Zelandeth]

Nah, no nervousness over it.  These things happen.  That's why I have breakdown cover.

I may well order in one of those nearest equivalent modern belts as a test as if there's a component that's likely to be a liability the CVT belt is it.

I'll probably grab one of the ones out of the spares stash in the interim though as I reckon they're probably in better shape than mine.  Seriously...pretty much all of my spares look and feel like they were stored in the hold of the Titanic.

I will be curious to see what condition what's left of the belt is in once we're home.  It's still in there, hooked around the bottom of the cage.  My guess is it will be a perfectly clean break at one point where the braiding has failed under the no doubt considerable centrifugal forces at 57mph that I was doing at the time.

Edit: Sadly the cafe is closed, or I'd be parked in their car park and spending money there to grab something to drink rather than sitting at the side of the A5.

[dollywobbler]

Balls. A sudden failure is rather unsettling. I'm amazed at the abuse the belt currently fitted to TWC has lapped up so far (fitted last summer in Essex, then went Vmax on the A23 at 70mph, did laps of Goodwood, then up Shelsley Walsh and a fair few hoons since!). Reminds me that I should really carry one in the Invacar along with tools to fit...

Only good thing is they coast very nicely with no belt!

[Zelandeth]

19 minutes ago, dollywobbler said:

Balls. A sudden failure is rather unsettling.

Only good thing is they coast very nicely with no belt!

To be fair DW I suspect that poor storage of this belt in its history is probably the major factor here.  Yours being NOS from the factory hopefully has been rather better looked after.  I don't even know if this one was previously used or not.  For the sake of a belt and a couple of spanners though a belt change kit wouldn't be a bad thing to carry though.

This one has failed within only a couple of hundred miles of regular use, so if yous was going to go similarly I'd have expected it to have done so by now.

They do coast for bloody miles with no belt don't they!  It took me a good few seconds to realise I'd actually lost drive given the lack of deceleration.

Spookily quiet without a belt too!

[Zelandeth]

Getting bored now.

I still don't get why no recovery company who do call out work seem to be even vaguely capable of giving a reasonable estimate of arrival times.

Edit: "Your driver was delayed on a previous job, you're probably looking at another 45 mins to an hour."

Well last time I spoke to you I was the first job the driver had coming on duty three minutes after the call...so much for that.

[Zelandeth]

Hey look, a recovery truck...

Brief (seriously, like fifteen minutes) truck ride later...

We're home.

Looking at the remains of the belt I'm sticking with my original theory of just a knackered old belt that decided that it had had enough.

No sign of any damage other than the clean break at the one point (the gouges are just where it was sitting against the still rotating secondary pulley I think).

[dozeydustman]

Glad to see you're home safe. At least a belt isn't an expensive repair.

[LightBulbFun]

8 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

We're home.

Looking at the remains of the belt I'm sticking with my original theory of just a knackered old belt that decided that it had had enough.

No sign of any damage other than the clean break at the one point (the gouges are just where it was sitting against the still rotating secondary pulley I think).

happy to see you made it home in the end  

any comments from the recovery man once he saw/realised what he was recovering?  

[Tadhg Tiogar]

6 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

....any comments from the recovery man once he saw/realised what he was recovering?  

It'll be something to regale his grandchildren with after he retires....

[Zelandeth]

54 minutes ago, dozeydustman said:

Glad to see you're home safe. At least a belt isn't an expensive repair.

Yeah, to be honest it was probably one of the components I was watching with the most suspicion as well.

I do wonder if a bit of forced air cooling directed to towards the pulleys wouldn't be a bad idea for long term reliability.

Edit: Why the fluff are Dayco HP2020 belts £70-100 over here, but £30 in the US?  Guess I'll be getting one shipped over then!  Even including shipping it's half the price of buying one here it seems...

I'd like to test one out, as if we can use a modern, readily available belt without issues that has to be a good thing.

[LightBulbFun]

26 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Yeah, to be honest it was probably one of the components I was watching with the most suspicion as well.

I do wonder if a bit of forced air cooling directed to towards the pulleys wouldn't be a bad idea for long term reliability.

its a shame you dont have that thermal camera you borrowed a few years back, it would be interesting to see what sort of temperatures the whole CVT setup get to  

I know AC did do destructive wear testing with regards to the CVT which involved fitting a Model 70 with a 650cc engine and instructing someone rag the utter daylights out of it around some sort of race track until the belt failed

speaking of that thermal imaging camera, I seem to recall you took a picture of the Saab?'s engine bay, but I cant find it now, so im curious have I just been imagining that or not?...

[dozeydustman]

34 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Yeah, to be honest it was probably one of the components I was watching with the most suspicion as well.

I do wonder if a bit of forced air cooling directed to towards the pulleys wouldn't be a bad idea for long term reliability.

Edit: Why the fluff are Dayco HP2020 belts £70-100 over here, but £30 in the US?  Guess I'll be getting one shipped over then!  Even including shipping it's half the price of buying one here it seems...

I'd like to test one out, as if we can use a modern, readily available belt without issues that has to be a good thing.

Have you tried a general engineering suppliers such as Eriks; they were a great source of drive belts when I needed to get things for groundskeeping equipment a few years back and their belts were half the price of branded and lasted about the same time as OEM.

https://shop.eriks.co.uk/en/mechanical-power-transmission-v-belts/

http://www.bearingshopuk.co.uk/belts/

 

If you know the width, diameter and angle you could probably find something suitable. Might be useful for @Mrs6C, @LightBulbFun and @dollywobbler for replacement parts for their respective 3-wheel wonders.

[Zelandeth]

Rock Auto have them for £30 so I've got one on the way from them.

I took thermal images of pretty much anything that stayed still long enough when we had access to the Flir E8, pretty sure the Saab was among those.

 

[LightBulbFun]

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

Rock Auto have them for £30 so I've got one on the way from them.

if its the aforementioned DAYCO HP2020 belt, one thing I have noticed is they are a little bit longer then the original IIRC, I dont think it will be a major issue, but you might need to tweak pulley distance, just a heads up so you can figure out how much to do so in advance

(do you just add however extra long the belt is to the normal 10.25 inch pulley distance distance they give in the workshop manual? so if, just making numbers here if the belt was 1 inch longer would you then instead adjust the pulleys to 11.25 inches apart instead to get the same amount of tension as before? or am I completely off the mark?)

 

for those curious the part number of the orignial belt is DAYCO 43-5639 and sometimes DAYCO STY801

(but STY801 is clearly just the DHSS Stock code for them, all Model 70's parts have a STY number)

[Mr Pastry]

15 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

do you just add however extra long the belt is to the normal 10.25 inch pulley distance distance they give in the workshop manual?

Good question - not quite as simple as that.  Some online belt/pulley suppliers have an interactive calculator if you want to look into it. 

[Zelandeth]

I'll wait until I've got the belt to confirm what adjustment it looks like will be needed.  I suspect you'd be looking at an extra 1/2" needed between the pulleys as you'll essentially have an extra 1" of free belt between the pulleys distributed evenly between the two runs of the belt.*  The same amount of belt will be wrapped around each of the pulleys, that's a constant...so that extra 1" will need to be in the "slack" between them.  I'll make contact with @Mrs6C shortly to see if I can pick up one of the NOS belts there as A: I'd like to be able to get the car pointing the right direction in the garage, and B: It will make it way easier for me to come up with any theories with regards to the compatibility (or lack thereof) of the HP2020 if I've got the two belts next to each other in front of me as I fully expect to need to tweak the tension a bit to account for the HP2020 being very slightly wider from memory, so it will want to ride higher on the pulleys - so a bit more tension will be needed to counteract that.

*Yes I know it's not quite that simple as one side will be tighter than the other...but for the purposes of this exercise it works.

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

...speaking of that thermal imaging camera, I seem to recall you took a picture of the Saab?'s engine bay, but I cant find it now, so im curious have I just been imagining that or not?...

There you go, those are all of the car related IR photos I got back when we had the Flir.

It's something I'd really like to add to the toolkit...Far, far too expensive though to justify.

[Slowsilver]

4 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Hey look, a recovery truck...
Brief (seriously, like fifteen minutes) truck ride later...
We're home.
Looking at the remains of the belt I'm sticking with my original theory of just a knackered old belt that decided that it had had enough.
No sign of any damage other than the clean break at the one point (the gouges are just where it was sitting against the still rotating secondary pulley I think).

Sorry I didn't see your post earlier. I could have gone over to your place and picked up a belt then brought it out to you with some tools and helped you fit it. Wouldn't have been too far to travel from here and you wouldn't have had to wait so long.
Glad you got home safely (eventually!).
 

[LightBulbFun]

29 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

There you go, those are all of the car related IR photos I got back when we had the Flir.

It's something I'd really like to add to the toolkit...Far, far too expensive though to justify.

very cool  and yeah would love a thermal imaging camera some day as well!

(I assume most of the lighting ones you took are the ones that I saw on ATL at the time?)

 

reminds me I think I spotted the ol pug on facebook the other day?  

https://www.facebook.com/alan.hitchcock.71/posts/10221913895809172

[Zelandeth]

Glad she's still on the go.  Was a bloody good little car, just too many cars, not enough room!  If anyone was looking for a reliable, economical, surprisingly roomy little runaround I'd recommend one in a heartbeat.

26 minutes ago, Slowsilver said:

Sorry I didn't see your post earlier. I could have gone over to your place and picked up a belt then brought it out to you with some tools and helped you fit it. Wouldn't have been too far to travel from here and you wouldn't have had to wait so long.
Glad you got home safely (eventually!).
 

It's okay.  I'm honestly not even sure where in the pile of chaos at the back of the garage the spare belt or two are...or if I maybe even decided that they were too far gone and binned them (the one I put on was the best looking by a long shot).  Plus you could absolutely guarantee that I'd manage to forget to pick up at least one absolutely critical tool for the job.  Plus I didn't really fancy twirling spanners at the side of the A5 at rush hour.  It was comfortable sitting in the sun with the breeze running perfectly across the car, but I'd have started melting in a hurry if I'd been working...and didn't have any water on hand.

One good thing did come out of today, today was the first fuel up in TPA since she's been allowed out of town properly and since the carb rebuild - 35MPG on the nose.  That's much more in the sort of ballpark I was hoping to see than the mid 20s I'd seen so far.

[vulgalour]

Glad you got rescued eventually, that wait was so long you'd almost have been quicker pushing the car home!

[Zelandeth]

Mrs6C very kindly dropped this off this morning for me.

Details for reference.  Sadly this part number seems to be totally obsolete, guessing it was made specifically for the DHSS parts contract in a single massive batch.

Taking a closer look shows this to be in waaaaaaaaay better shape than any of the belts I got with KPL.

Should be able to make a start on getting that installed shortly.

[Zelandeth]

Changing the CVT belt on an Invacar is pretty simple.  I think the manual says you're meant to remove one of the pulleys, but if you back the tensioner all the way off there's just enough slack to walk the belt on without removing things.

Now having a good new belt on hand to compare to I'm able to confirm that both of these are only really fit for the bin.

Aside from being as perished as the one which just went pop they're obviously used and well worn.  The new belt is 1 1/4" wide, whereas these have both worn down quite considerably, the widest is barely an inch.

The better of the two can stay on as a "limp home backup" but that's the closest to actual service it will get.

With the new belt in place the tension was set as per the manual based on the distance between the pulley centres.

Will obviously take a bit of time for the new belt to bed in but initial signs on the brief test drive showed everything working as it should.  Haven't been above 30mph yet but I've no reason to expect any issues.

The one really noticeable thing that has changed however is that the horrible what I'd always assumed was clutch judder appears to have gone.  That's been an issue I've had since the first time KPL moved on my driveway under her own power so has been with me for a while!  If a new belt has sorted it I'll be very happy!

In preparation for some remedial work to the paintwork I'm starting to tidy a few things up.  While I'd got a decent finish on the engine cover the actual surface was badly pitted in a load of places.

To remedy this I've been going over the area with some self setting filler, once the panel is given a going over to sand that down it should look a lot better with fresh paint applied afterwards.

Looks a bit ridiculous in the meantime, but that's the way with cosmetics isn't it!  Will be doing this a panel at a time to keep things manageable.

[Zelandeth]

Following the replacement of the belt, TPA was out and about today to meet up with a couple of friends.

As if seeing one of them wasn't unusual enough.

The new belt seems to be working well.  The only issue to surface was the cooling fan air intake grill making another bid for freedom.

This is the third or fourth time it's attempted to get itself sucked into the fan.  So I'll be making some improvements to the usual attachment methods... usually it is retained simply by four screws hooked through the mesh.  Think some suitably large washers and a few bolts will do a better job.

[quicksilver]

Many thanks for letting me have a shot behind the handlebars of TPA. She runs and stops well (the best of the three I've driven I think) and is practically a luxury car with the fancy seat and cruise control A less slippery floor would be beneficial though, it's weird how little grip that rubber has now as the other three don't seem to suffer from that issue.

[Zelandeth]

6 hours ago, quicksilver said:

Many thanks for letting me have a shot behind the handlebars of TPA. She runs and stops well (the best of the three I've driven I think) and is practically a luxury car with the fancy seat and cruise control A less slippery floor would be beneficial though, it's weird how little grip that rubber has now as the other three don't seem to suffer from that issue.

It's nice to have some kind of confirmation that I've been doing something right then!

I think the issue with the flooring is that it's simply turned to plastic, there's no flexibility in it at all if you try to bend it, it just crumbles to nothing.

So yesterday we had one small issue in that the grill on the engine cooling air intake fell off.

Given that's the only thing stopping people from sticking their fingers in here, this was something I considered sorting to be a high priority.

Originally it was held in simply by the ends of four small stubby self tapping screws poking through the mesh.

Given this is the third or fourth time it's done this I figured it was time to improve on this arrangement.

Problem solved.

I will need to go and trim one edge of the washers at some point as you can see it through the grill if you look closely in person.  At least the grill won't be going anywhere on its own again though so I don't need to worry about things getting sucked into the fan while driving.

[Zelandeth]

This arrived this morning.

Along with this new oil pressure switch for the Jag - which was ordered a full 24 hours before the belt.  How Rock Auto get stuff here this quickly I've no idea.

This meant that I could finally get some actual measurements relative to the original Invacar belts, which I'd been wanting to for a while.  I'd hard a few mentions of the HP2020 being slightly longer so wanted to see how how much longer it was and whether it would be possible to take up the additional slack with the tension adjustment.

First up, an original Dayco 43-5639.

So let's compare that to the HP2020.

Unless I'm seeing things, those belts look to be as close to the same length as to be identical according to this tape measure.

How about width.  I measured the new belt I fitted a couple of days ago at 1 1/4" wide. How does that compare?

So it's fractionally narrower, but not by much at all.  The wear limit width wise according to the manual is 28mm.

So not a problem it looks like.  The slightly narrower starting width means we might not get quite as much life out of the belt, though at this point we're still trying to figure out what normal belt life actually is.  To be honest if it lasts a year of normal use and is an annual service item...it's a £30 current production part.  I can deal with that.

Of course this is theory at this point...while my measurements show that the HP2020 is all but identical to the NOS Invacar CVT belts, it may well behave quite differently in the real world.  My plan at this point is to get the HP2020 installed at some point shortly so I can get some real world testing done.  It looks really promising though.

[LightBulbFun]

oh cool and interesting stuff

I seem to recall when @dollywobbler put the HP2020 belt over one of his Model 70 belts the HP2020 belt was longer, but maybe Im miss remembering things or it was just a perspective thing etc

so im very pleased to see it matches up even more then I originally thought  

one thing worth noting is the HP2020 belt is directional where as the original  is not, but for the amount of time your going to be spending reversing I doubt it will be a problem! (and you can always refit an original belt for that top speed in reverse run LOL)

how do the shoulder angles of the Model 70 and HP2020 belts compare?

I look forward to seeing how it performs once installed  

 

it would be interesting to measure up one of the DAYCO STY801 belts kicking around in the ol spares stash and see if those are the same, they are also a Model 70 belt, but not a part I can find in the parts catalog curiously enough, even tho STY801 is clearly a DHSS stock code, the stock code for the belt is listed as STY301 in the DHSS parts manual, which was also listed on the label of one of the belts that was still in its wrapper, should have grabbed a picture of said label as it included some supplier info

tho given how similar STY801 and STY301 is I wonder if it was some sort of typo on DAYCO's part? none of the STY numbers even remotely get close to 801, the last being STY646, which is the "passenger carrying is forbidden" plaque if your curious LOL

[PhilA]

Thought the transmission was after the belt on this?

[LightBulbFun]

56 minutes ago, PhilA said:

Thought the transmission was after the belt on this?

if I understand things correctly it goes engine-centrifugal-clutch-gearbox-forward/reverse-Pulley-belt-pulley-triplex-chain-diff