now looking in my garage a used rear sprocket (70 teeth) that my given there are around 10 months and comes from a broken bike, I realized what had not been oxidized in cleaning the teeth I noticed that the tooth is like new, shiny as chrome which does not scratch with hss tip, it looks like hard chrome, it may be that his comes from a Japanese bike with belt 1 "1/2 pitch 14mm
sorry for picture distorted due to the perspective of the phone, there is no 1 / 10mm wear
A possible solution to worn out drive belts and gear wheels is a solution that the Dutch came up in the late 70`s. Does anyone remember the DAF 55. It had no gearbox as such. The gear lever selected forward or reverse. All the work being done by a rubber V belt and an expanding pulley wheel. The problem at the time was the longevity of the V belt and time to change and set up the pulley wheel. The expense of frequent belt changes made the car unpopular although the car was cheap.
I remember an episode to Top gear quite some years ago,The problem of broken V belts was solved by making them out of steel. On the particular episode of the program, they fitted the new set up to a Formula 1 car that David Coulthard drove.
With this set up, the benefits are large. The possible weight saving in the region of approx. 100kg. Made of no gear box, very small tunnel in the car giving tons of leg room. No worn out rear drive wheel and longer life of the final drive. As the car could possibly now weigh less than 450kg Taxation and regs regarding the class of vehicle will change.
The DVLA classes three wheelers at this weight as motorcycles.
Not only DAF usd a Variomatic Drive. Audi use(d) a similar system on their Multitronic. And most of the John Deer combine harvesters in the 70's had a variable speed system with V-belt drive. I would strongly recommend that Morgan does NOT use this kind of system. As they reach their limitations at the simple drive belt of the M3W they should not even think about a variable one!
Hannes once: Green M3W; 2013 now: Red 4/4 Sport; 2011 and some practical cars for use in real life
I had a look at my rear sprocket today & it does not look good. The radial grooves are on both faces of the teeth. Should I change it soon or wait till next service? I'm still in warranty October 2013 car, 5400 miles.
If you can tolerate the noise until next service and it will still be under warranty then have at it. Give your dealer a heads up so that he can get the new steel sprocket instead of having him foist off a stock aluminum sprocket which will wear just as badly as the first!
I'm on number three! Going in to swap it out for the Super Max neoprene rebuild but that was on my dime.
What's your mileage? Who cares. Is it practical? See #1. What happens when it rains? You get wet.
