Is it possible to buy a belt dive drivetrain? Where? Cheaper is better

Cheap ain’t an option.At all.Give Tim at sideways a ring (and be nice).
Assuming you already have a bike with split stays and ebb/sliders of course 😉

Rorschach – Member
…Assuming you already have a bike with split stays and ebb/sliders of course

….and stiff chainstays

Cheap ain’t an option.At all.Give Tim at sideways a ring (and be nice).
Assuming you already have a bike with split stays and ebb/sliders of course

Yup, it’s a bomber!

Assuming you already have a bike with split stays and ebb/sliders of course
….and stiff chainstays

And the correct length chainstays for the gear ratio you want.

Gates is the only option at the moment and it’s not cheap. I can’t remember what I paid now, something like £50 for the front pulley, £25 for the rear pulley and £50 for the belt.

CycleMonkey in the USA are the only retailer I know of selling Gates belt drive stuff as aftermarket, not just as part of a complete bike.
I think it’s available from Gates themselves as well.

CharlieMungus – Member
Yup, it’s a bomber!

Raleigh Bomber? if so I doubt the chainstays would be stiff enough.

(I’ve thought about doing it to mine)

I was a bit out with my prices earlier.
Just looked through my emails and it’s about £225 for a belt and two pulleys.

Use the Drive Calculator, bottom left here, to see what ratios are available for your chainstay length.

There is / was a Taiwanese company doing belt drive too but not seen anything of them in a long time

Cheap belt drive you say?

How about this?

£229, although the wheelsize is not quite on trend.

Hard to tell from those pictures of the Belter, but I would guess they’ve adapted the cam belt drive from a car.
I wondered if anyone had tried this as a ghetto solution.
I’d like to see it tried on an adult bike.

It says it’s a Gates in the text under the pic

Didn’t that city bike made from car bits have a belt drive?

Not sure about the auto-parts belt but I know it’s a fixie hub with a freewheeling bottom-bracket. They are also gorgeous. It’s bad impulse buying multiple bikes for yourself, but doing it for your kids takes it to a new level!

Gates make cam belts, so I’d guess that’s what it’s based on if the whole bike costs about the same as a CentreTrack system.

Gates is the only option at the moment and it’s not cheap.

Continental is meant to be launching one.

Raleigh Bomber? if so I doubt the chainstays would be stiff enough.

(I’ve thought about doing it to mine)

It is, didn’t know the chain stays had to be particularly strong

Why does chainstay length govern gear ratio anymore than on a chain bike?

because the belt is a fixed length and tensioners aren’t recommended though I have seen 2 being used

Doesnt look a bad setup on the kids bike

Because there’s a limited range of pulley sizes and belt lengths.
You can’t just go up or down a tooth or take a link out to take up the slack.
An EBB gives about 14mm of adjustment, so there is some leeway, but you still might find you can’t get the ratio you want if you are using an existing frame.

What ratio do you want ? 2:1 is common for SS
What’s your chainstay length ?
Put the numbers in here, bottom left. http://www.carbondrivesystems.com/products/overview/#

thepodge – Member
There is / was a Taiwanese company doing belt drive too but not seen anything of them in a long time

Beltrans? I got a prototype system as a freebie from them about 10 years ago. It uses 8mm belts which I’ve found skip a lot more than the Gates one.

The flexiness of a bicycle creates lots of problems for belt drive which requires that the pulleys stay in accurate alignment, and Gates uses bigger teeth (11mm) presumably to counter this. Schlumpf were working on using a 14mm pitch belt, but the size of sprockets needed would rule it out for mtb use.

CharlieMungus – Member
It is, didn’t know the chain stays had to be particularly strong

Very few bikes are built with chainstays that are stiff enough for the original Gates system (Pompino seems to be ok), but apparently if you inject expanding high density foam into the chainstay you can stiffen them up enough.

Doing a belt conversion is worth it if it works, but there’s a load of woe if you get it wrong.

Don’t let that discourage you though. One of the reasons I got the Bomber frame was to belt it. It’s of low enough value to do radical modifications such as weld on on a stiffener to the chainstay. It has the advantage of plenty clearance for a large front ring – which is often the killer for a belt drive conversion.

Mine is intended for a retro fatbike project, ie the fatbike they could have made back then.

BTW if anyone has an old Raleigh Bomber fork, I’m after one for some brutal modifications.

Mine is intended for a retro fatbike project, ie the fatbike they could have made back then.

Very similar idea here. For a fat bike for the beach and some dunes