RC10Talk - The Net's Largest Vintage R/C Community

I just bought a Hyperdrive belt drive system to use on my RC10 TrackMaster tranny, and I wanted to know how tight to set the belt tension?

Since the teeth are fine, I'm thinking it will need to be set somewhat tight, and not as loose as the TrackMaster belts.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Belts should always be run moderatelly tight. Often times people run their belts too loose because they don't understand how belts are designed. If a belt is run too loose, it will climb on the pulley under acceleration. This will wear the belt prematurely (or the pulley), because the "pitch" between the two is no longer the same - because the effective diamater of the pulley has changed but the number of teeth has not. Just because a belt doesn't skip, doesn't mean it is tight enough. This can also lead to a very inefficient transmission because of the binding under load (that is not apparent while free running the tranny, e.g. like spinning it in your hand), because of the pitch difference. As for how tight do you run your belt? NO good answer, because every situation requires its own tension. The # of teeth on the pulleys, belt wrap around (not to be confused with reach around), length of belt, etc. etc., all determine now tight the belt should be run. So for you, trial and error. Good rule of thumd, on a small, fine pitch belt like that, 2mm deflection with moderate pressure. Good luck. -Jeff

The hyperdrive RC10 instructioin sheet was posted in the scan section a while back. Some good pointers in it.
http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10803