Free Spirits Belt Conversion

Looks a good idea but is there any indication of the life of the belt?

It looks a fairly long procedure to fit or change a belt and at the price it equates to several chain and sprocket kits!

 

I agree its cleaner than a chain and if the belt life is good it might well be worth considering, please keep us up to date on any information you get from Free Spirits, many thanks

 

40,000 miles is middle of the road for a belt as I’ve got one but not on my bonneville

 

From the Free Spirit website the belt looks quite narrow, they do not seem to be much wider than the chain. I have seen them on Harleys and some of the F800 BMW's run belts and they estimate the sort of mileage you are talking about, but they are much wider.
I would be interested to see whether the narrower belt affected it's estimated life and if so by how much.

 

Mines on the F800gt. Didn’t know they did narrow belts. I also had a short lived sportser 1200 with same width belt.

 

Looked again at Free spirits web site they quote the belt at 1" wide so my comments about narrow belts are unfounded, it will be interesting to see what they say about belt life, I would agree about 40,000 miles would seem realistic

 

The belt on my Buell was for "life" of the bike. I had 28,000 brisk miles on the Buell and the belt had no sign of wear. I loved the belt drive, quiet, clean and zero maintenance. My Buell was 12 years old when I sold it.

 

Do not think that a belt drive is a fit and forget option they still require regular inspection for damage, some people are lucky and have never had a problem, I myself have never had any issues on my Buell Ulysses but a lot of people have had issues.

The belt and pully's are open to abrasive damage and debris, it also needs tensioning some like buell's have large tension wheels but they did break and a aftermarket spring loaded adjuster [free spirits] was a recommended mod.

Read the webb on issues from Harley and such like the argument between Harley and Indian where on the bigger Harleys you have to strip out the primary drive to change a belt but on the Indian it's just removing a silencer and pully casing.

They are good in as much as they are cleaner and make less noise but have issues of their own as below: