2011 Voyager Drive Belt Life

[jimbo279]

Hi All. I have a 2011 Voyager 1700 which has 93,000 km's (56,000 miles) and I am starting to watch my drive belt closer. It suffered some rock damage about 40,000 km's ago and hasn't showed any signs of going to fail due to the rock damage. I couldn't find a lot of info in the forum to do with expected belt life (a lot on belt noise). My belt is pretty noisy under 20 mph but that just seems to be the nature of the beast. If anyone can share their belt experiences, especially the high milers I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Jimbo279
2011 Voyager 1700
Calgary, Alberta (summer)
Queen Creek, Arizona (winter)

[tonik]

In my opinion your belt isn't even broken in yet. You have a long ways to go, belts don't wear out usually...they are damaged by rocks as happened to you...and that leads to the need to replace it.

Easily a 150K mile part. So that's like a billion km's or so right? :)

[JSOhio]

My first rear tire change I had the shop do, they tightend the belt to tight. Took me 3 trys to get it just right. What I found was I run my belt on the loose side. Slight tension on it but not sloopy or firm. Once I got it right, I have No noise at any speed.

[JSOhio]

Forgot to mention it is a 2011 Voyager...

[Peg]

If it's too tight, it can destroy the belt, the pulleys, the output shaft bearing, or all of those things. My belt was replaced by a dealer while a previous owner had the bike, after the first belt suffered stone damage.

After I bought it, I found it needed another new belt, and two new pulleys - through being "over-tensioned" to Kaw spec by that dealer. 30 percent of the teeth on the belt had cracked almost right though, and because the kevlar in the belt is much stronger than alloy the teeth in the pulleys were all chewed away to stubs.

I did the work myself, and the belt is now tensioned to HD spec... About 10mm at 10lbs. No further problem, no noise.

So I guess it's how you treat it that makes the difference? This is the third belt on this bike in under 30,000km, and I can see already it'll be the last.

[Top Cat]

Easily a 150K mile part. So that's like a billion km's or so right? :)

:lmao:

[H8BUGZ]

What do normal pulleys look like? I ride about one mile of gravel a day to and from the highway. My pulleys have a very pronounced wave pattern worn into them. I do find that adjusting the belt to the looser side of the spec works the best, including noise reduction.

[Peg]

I wasn't sure myself what a pulley should look like - but I knew it shouldn't look like mine did. I searched on Ebay and saw some nice close-up photos of the teeth of pulley's taken off parted-out bikes - and then bought a set of them, along with a belt off the same bike. I don't know what the condition of the rest of the bike was, but the bits I've got are like new.