I'm now onto my third drive belt in as many years (first one was replaced on the side of a dry and dusty gravel road in scorching heat after about 21,000km of ownership, second was thankfully in the shade after only 9,000km on the bike. Hey - at least I'm getting quicker, it only took me ~35 minutes the second time!). Belts are very expensive here in New Zealand, currently $370 NZ from H-D, so I don't want to keep buying the damn things if I can help it.
Now I have three choices as far as I can tell: 1) Stop riding gravel roads 2) Buy an Africa Twin or a Tenere 700 3) Do a chain conversion
As I really like the Uly I'm looking at #3 - the problem is all the posts I've read about doing this were mostly written 10 years ago and the products often aren't available any more, or the links go to dead web sites/non-existent pages. Some people use a Gates type pulley for the tensioner, others say this is a terrible idea and you need to use an EBR sprocket (which is no longer available it seems). Others use off the shelf sprockets with machined spacer inserts to make them fit, and yet others use expensive conversion kits that are no longer manufactured and sold.
So my question is - in the year 2020 what is the best way to do this conversion? I realise everyone does it slightly differently so I'll need to cobble together bits and pieces but help getting started would be grand! Even better would be someone who has all the bits already but wants to go back to belt drive
You can pick your poison with whatever chain you like.
The toothed tensioner pulley was a NAPA auto thing I found in the catalog, I flipped the stock bracket over, slotted one hole for adjustment and tapped a 5/16-18 set screw into that slot to hold adjustment against the mounting stud so I wouldn't have to over torque the mount so much to hold adjustment. worked like a charm.
Hope you like cleaning chain lube off the rear wheel now! LOL.
I never had an issue with the bike not having a cush drive in the final drive assembly and rode it pretty hard (track bike). But I did notice a more "immediate" power delivery FWIW.
Yes all belt guards are in place. I do mostly road miles but the two times I've had belts break I've been on a gravel road so I guess a stone gets up onto the belt and then when it meets the pulley something has to give! When I changed this last belt I could see a small shiny nick taken out of the metal behind the front pulley where a stone looks like it's gouged it a bit.
On the PBI Sprockets site am I looking for offset sprockets or "OEM" ones? Assuming I want a 530 chain could I grab one of these for the front
I picked up the rear sprocket from PBI -- they're down the street from me : ) The teeth wore down to a sliver after the first year of use. I'm using the Vortex now, which is also aluminum, so I don't suspect it will last any longer. Seems they're all aluminum nowadays.
Just use DuPont Teflon self-cleaning dry wax chain saver instead of regular chain lubricant and you will have no any issues with with lube splashes or chain cleaning. This is what I use and have no any issues.
A lot of people do not know about this miracle product and keep saying the false mantra that chain is dirty and requires maintenance.
If you can find Free Spirits chain conversion kit for Buell XB buy it. It has everything you need except chain and tools. Well, you might have issues with rear and front sprockets diameters combo because their diameters combo might maintain wrong chain slack you will not be able to set properly with chain tensioner so you still might need to find different front and rear sprockets. But that kit has prerty good adjustable chain tensioner they do not sell separately which is important but hard to find part.
I do not recommend to buy the Free Spirits pulley tensioner, it has different design comparing with chain tensioner and it works different. But the most important it has desing flaw, it has weak point and those Free Spirits pulley tensioner tend to brake. Avoid the Free Spirits pulley tensioner on any cost, find Free Spirits chain tensioner if you can.
That Free Spirits tensioner in the link from the previous post is belt tensioner, do not buy it, it will be broken unter load.
Here is how Free Spirit's chain tensioner looks like. Do not be confused, even the pulley tensioner looks similar those have a hole in the pulley tensioner bracket for some reason and that hole is where those pulley tensioners crack. The pulley tensioner can anso crack in different place at lover portion. You need the chain tensioner, the pulley tensioner they produce is garbage.
I'll look for a pic, but seriously. The OE tensioner bracket has 2 mounting holes. Slot one so the bracket swings up and down (for chain tension), and pivots around on the other mounting stud. Don't slot both holes.
The big set screw is to take up the space in the slot (fore-aft, after adjusting the chain tension), so it won't slide against the stock mounting nut and loosen itself up.
You save a couple hundred bucks vs, buying $omething with a known weakness.
There isn't a lot of adjustment, but doesn't need to be. I played with many, many sprocket combos and only found one ratio that needed a half link. Actually a new chain to replace the old stretched one solved that one.
Thanks everyone, that is some fantastic info - I'll grab a front PBI and either a PBI or Vortex rear (depending on which is cheaper by the time it's shipped here) along with that EBR idler linked in ebay. It looks like the Vulcanworks nut is currently out of stock so I'll flick them an email asking when they expect to have it back in stock, or google around a bit (might find one on ebay).
I must admit I didn't think of using a 520 chain, thought it would be a bit small for a 1200cc bike, but seeing everyone else happily using that size makes me a bit more confident (as long as I stick with a quality chain).
Just playing with gearing now, leaning towards a 21/55 combo which will lower the gearing around 8~9% (the Uly seems to like cruising around 120km/h and our pretty heavily policed limit here is 100km/h)
Thanks again for all the links, pretty sure I can build a sweet setup from this info!
Many of us have installed the XB9 crank sprocket on our Uly's. It's an 11% lower option. Helps a lot on fire roads etc. It'll still pull around 110 mph. (177 kph) So the 8-9% reduction won't hurt at all.
Will do Smorris. I'm currently waiting on the bits to arrive - it will take a while from the US to NZ so will probably be putting it together around Christmas.
I've ordered a front and rear PBI sprocket in 520 chain size (bought the rear 55 tooth from PBI webshop but they didn't have a front in 21 tooth so I grabbed that from Dennis Kirk) and the idler that Swanthog linked from Ebay. I'll grab a quality 520 chain locally once the sprockets arrive.
Unfortunately the sprocket nut is out of stock, I emailed Vortex asking when they thought it might be back in stock but I never got a reply. I might have to pack it out with washers instead. Also no luck finding a Free Spirits chain tensioner (not unexpected as they no longer make the chain kit) so I'll have to slot my standard pulley tensioner bracket, or fab up something.