Belts

[Douglas Brenner]

I have a question. No real reason to ask except I am curious. Why wouldn't you want to use a cogged belt to drive the rear wheels instead of a chain?

[Dave Gomberg]

One reason is that you would have to design a hub to mate with the output shaft of the engine. The shafts are designed for a chain sprocket.

Another is that cogged belts don't stand up well to the combination of engine output and vehicle weight plus the on-off throttle loads. There were some examples of two-stroke engines in DSRs a few years ago that used cogged belts. The biggest reason for their DNFs were belts that broke - frequently.

Dave

[Jnovak]

Belt drives will never live with the loads on the drive system of a race car with a 1000cc engine. They are barely acceptable on an F500 with 100 hp. We changed out F500s to chain drive about 15 years ago & have never had a problem.

Thanks ... Jay Novak