I'm going to be running a 2" wide 1/2" pitch belt on the old timey digger I'm building. Just got a couple in fact. I'm curious. When did guys start running 3" belts?
>>>>>,I'm runnin' a Two inch drive on my 6;71 Blower with one to one pulleys ,,it's been my daily driver for 5 years and about 35,000 miles ,,BDS found me two new spare belts a couple years ago ,,but haven't needed to use em ,,last year when it ate the main drive bearing ,,BDS said thay hadn't used this bearing since '68 ,,,,i think the Three inch drives came into being in the early '70's ,,or maybe even the late '60's ,,the FED Top Fuel Dragster i was on the pit crew for in '72 had Three inch pulleys ,,as did every digger there ,,
As I started to look for belts I was pretty surprised to find the same belts the blower places had at some online industrial places for less than half or even better. I picked up a pair of 540H200's for $30 each as opposed to the $63 that BDS wanted.
>>>>>,Well ,,i took a few weeks of searchin' ,,but BDS found me two brand new original '60's era Gates 2 inch belts from two different speed shops on the west coast ,,charged me $100 for the pair and that included shipping ,,but then i used my part time business name ,,Conn Auto & Marine to buy em ,,that mighta helped ,,
The belts I got from the industrial place were Dayco's but I won an auction for a pair of Gates belts. About $35 shipped for the pair.
>>>>>,that was a good find ,,,,I ran Dayco belts on my racing Sno-Mobiles in the early '70's ,,,good belts ,, nuthin' wrong with Two inchers ,,look at the old Garlits digger pics from the early/middle '60's ,,,he was runnin' Two inchers ,,,
V-belt drives predate 2" gilmer style belts but did exist at the same time. The only comercially available one I know of was the Cragar drive. I think Cragar sold them into the early sixties. Darned expensive if you can even find a complete one at all these days. Here's the three v-belt drive I cooked up for my coupe.
Thanks Tommy. I had a number of guys tell me the vbelt drive wouldn't work, if only because they'd never seen one. It works great! It makes 8+ pounds of boost and will slip if there happens to be a backfire.
Made in China....damn isn't anything made in this country anymore? I ran a 3 inch 1/2" pitch on my 671....I like the old digger pictures with chain drive blower drives.
Kerry, how does that work with the fact that V belts on a normal car need adjustment every now and then due to the belts streaching? Did you just get 3 same size belts and no problems?
Check out the single belt drive on the blower setup that I now have: i plan to run 2 belts, as soon as I get my coupe built the blower will be the next project - get it rebuilt, and set up.
>>>>>,Back in the '50's ,,,Paxton super chargers ran a V-Belt ,,trouble we had was slippage at hi rpm ,,so ,,we went with two ,,then three V-Belts ,,three Chevy / GMC 6 cyl belts solved the problem ,,those big fat ones ,,
pay attention to batch numbers and buy all three with sequential or as close to it as you can. on a Gates belt it's the numbers in red following the white part numbers
>>>>>,These pics are from Polar Dragway ,Anchorage Alaska ,,1969 ,,notice the Two inch drive on the SB Chevy ,,and the Three inch drive on the Hemi ,,both these were built arounf '66-'67,,
Cool, I'm shooting for a 1964 ish feel for the digger so there still would have been plenty of 2" belts on the track. I didn't do anything special to match belt lengths other than getting three of the same size and brand. I did check tension pretty frequently at the beginning. Don't know if I got lucky of if they kind of self adjusted. When I broke the water pump shaft and things got crazy up front they stretched different amounts!
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