Put in a BDL kevlar belt primary drive. The procedure was staight forward. About a 3 hour job. Only PITA was correcting an interferance between the outer primary cover and the belt and front and rear pulleys. I converted the wet bearing on the transmission shaft to a sealed bearing by injecting grease into the bearing and installing the seal included in the kit. It also came with a sealed bearing, but I was not in the mood to take off the inner primary in order to take out the old bearing and drive in the new sealed one. When it becomes necessary to put in a new final drive belt, I will change over to the sealed bearing, since it all has to come apart anyway at that time.

BDL wanted to use a new clutch. In the old days, you'd just remove the chain drive and install a belt drive system, and use the old clutch after cleaning the clutch discs with brake cleaner. So now I have a new clutch. It uses coil springs intead of the stock weak diaphragm sring. I went with 9 clutch springs because I like a very firm clutch lever and the stock HD clutch is way to wussy . If I do a big bore, heads, cams, the new clutch will be able to handle the increased power and still lock up tight. You can use as many as 12 springs if you've got Popeye forearms.

The new belt fits right from the manufacturer, which means the kit does away with the tensioner. So now my primary drive is essentially maintenance free, in addition to being a lot lighter than the stock set up. Also, there won't ever be an issue with a primary leak, which is the most common/likely place for an oil leak to develop on a Harley.

Another thing is that the overall drive ratio is changed. Used to be that cruising at 70, my tach was around 3250. Now at 70. it is around 2800-2850. 3000 RPM is well over 70 now. This means I can hold off on that 6 sp OD tranny gear set I was thinking about for long distance cruising and highway commuting for now. Only downside is that the bike will not accelerate as hard, so I just may have my excuse to do that big bore/cams/heads motor build now.

 

Where are some pics of the set up?

 

i've run several BDL setups...they're nice...did you lose the compensatin nut on the front

 

Hey eyespy a picture is better than a thousand words

 

One thing I would not want to sacrifice is acceleration and that sure would be a downside! Is that because of the ratio or the belt? I do like the idea of the primary belt though.

 

Yeah, I was going to take pics of the whole process. Had my camera out, blah blah, friggen batteries were dead and I was too GD lazy and too much in a hurry to get the job started, so I said fack it! and didn't go to the store for new batteries. My bad, sorry 'bout that.

Regarding the compensating sprocket nut, the kit came with a new nut for the pulley.

 

It's because of the ratio. You can correct that if wanted by going up a tooth or two at the at the rear wheel. Or just by adding more CI!! lol.

The belt drive is much lighter than the chain drive and will actually spin up faster than a chain drive, all other things being kept equal, by virtue of the reduced weight/inertia of the drive mechanism and decreased parasitic loss.

 

BH...weight reduction is an excellent way to put power to the ground...reciprocating weight(anything turned by the crank) is the best way to increase power cause it takes less power to turn the rear wheel...i think its a cool setup as long as its still wet and keeps a compensating nut(it takes the shock off each hit of the motor, especially felt when luggin around)

 

Sweet! Cost a fortune though!

 

Now let's take it for a ride. Still waiting for the call.

I was off for eight days - go back on Tue -Wed, off Thur-Fri, but have to work Sat -Sun. Stop by the station next week end if you are in the area.