My S&S shop manual claim the stuff we see in the bottom of the cover is "mold release" from the belt manufacturing process.
I think they may be tryig to pawn off belt wear on the belt process.
This debris has to come from somewhere and mold release is nothing more than a film whether it' injection molded plastic or rubber molded product. We use a lot of timing belt on our production trimmers, some are L pitch and some are Polychain like the S&S belts. NONE exhibit any type of initial wear like you show in the picture. Harley belts do not shed like this and get fuzzy on the inside, so mold release is probably not "that" debris.
I'm wondering just how close the upper center idler is to the inside of the belt just below it. "IF" the belt were to bounce around on rapid accel and decel of the rpm's, it's possible that the idler teeth are contacting a fresh belt teeth. Once it wears off the top "interferrence" part of the tooth profile, it would not wear any further. But from the pictures it's really hard to tell.
Also, what is the thickness of the spacers MMC uses?
What I was thinking is that I can buy a gasket and draw up the gasket perimeter and use our waterjet to cut a full spacer. I would then mill some "air" slots on the sides and bottom. This would keep rain or just water from washing the M3W down.
If I made it from 1/4" (around 5mm) this plate aluminium, I could easily mill 1/8" deep air vent slots around the underside of the cover "V" shape.
Does that sound like anything you guys would be interested in?
If so, I can check into how much waterjet time and material costs and put a price on them. This just a thought.
If the '14s have them installed, I should be able to see one tomorrow at Morgan West and measure it up there; I'll let you all know.
Wish me luck tomorrow...
Have a great weekend dudes and dudettes!
