Trials and tribulations with the belt drive conversion
Well, i tried several things but it is difficult to find the right parts.
I am getting close to a working solution.
For the drive shaft, I got part number 3RAC-3PY/15 from rcmart
I got the hole bored out to 5 mm to fit on the drive shaft.
It is a tight fit but it works great.
Belts:
Don't bother with any of the 3 racing belts, they are all too long.
I found belts in Canada at a company called Fingertech robotics dot com
(This site still does not allow me to post HTTP links, go figure...)
Pulleys:
Next I had to find a pulley for the motor with a 3 mm center.
Found them at fingertechrobotics too.
Purchase a few different pulleys, a 16T, 18T and 22 T
They also have the shortest 3mm pitch belt I coud find so I got the 40T 120mm belt.
The pulleys needs to be bored out to 3.16mm.
Luckily, I work next door to a machine shop and the guys are old timers, very cool, a bottle of wine bought me a few favors there and they machined the 15T 3 racing pulley to 5mm for the drive shaft for free and the 22 T pulley to 3.16mm also.
So now, I have a functional belt drive from the motor to the drive shaft.
Next up, I am working on the secondary drive, also with belt.
Pictures to follow soon.
The biggest problem with converting this car is the very short play we have with motor positioning, forcing us to use very small belts, which are as hard to find as a needle in a hay stack.
If anybody has a source for 3mm pitch 3.5 or 4 mm wide short belts, 40 tooth job or less, it will make this a whole lot easier.
What really sucks is that this is taking time and winter is creaping in, I like to ride in large parking lots, and very soon, it will be all covered in snow. I hope to have a working system before hell freezes over!
While experimenting I wrote an email to 3Racing to tell them to please please please come out with an FGX V2 with a belt system, at least for the secondary drive to make things smooth. As I don't believe in Santa I doubt they will pay any attention to this but if they did, I believe they would have the best F1 on the market. The handling on this car is like no other. With a proper transmission, it would be at the top of the food chain.
Cheers,