Modern Vespa

I've got a knack for not getting things quite right the first time. After reading every thread remotely related to Dr Pulley's, variators, ET4 upgrades, and watching Scooter West's videos a couple times, here's what I think I need to give my drivetrain a little love--new sliders and belt change:

9g Dr Pulley Sliders (stock roller weight is 10g)
3 variator guide shoes
Malossi belt (original only has 2000 miles on it, but is 14 years old)
Variator holding tool
Clutch holding tool


Couple other items on the list including a new spark plug, but think I'm good on the rest. Just trying to get the variator sliders and new belt taken care of in one order. Thanks for any input--the Scooter West videos are really great at walking through it to know what to expect.

Dave

Did you read all the threads about the variators failing with Dr Pulley sliders in them?

We have a tuneup kit that includes the Malossi belt, a Polini air cleaner (yours might be a lot of pieces by now, the nuts you need to change because you can't reuse, something for your clutch spring to help eliminate clutch chatter, and slide pieces and rollers. We also have the tools, or you can go to harbor freight and get an electric impact wrench and change it out like the shop would. It's a lot cheaper and more practical in the long run than the clutch and variator holder tools.

https://scooterpartsco.com/et4/et4-drive-and-transmission/belt-variator-tuning-kit-vespa-et4

Please point those out because I haven't read ANY. One or twp about the sliders flipping. But not one thread on, "variators failing with Dr Pulley sliders in them"

Mine broke apart on the second set of them I used. They were installed properly. The aluminium that keeps the slider separate broke.
I did not see a real performance boost over just using heavier sliders would. To put it plainly I would not use them again.

If you didn't notice a difference you went too heavy on the sliders. And heavier stock weight would reduce RPM's and give you less power. You would want lighter stock rollers, not heavier

Had the same thing happen to a ventilator with stock rolls, so don't blame the sliders.

I'm using 1 gram heaver sliders in the Honda. Not for performance, they last longer and don't get flat spots.
The posts I remember are about the sliders in Vespa's make the belt ride higher and damage the case gasket. The Honda doesn't have that problem.

Thanks for the feedback Motovista! Gave me a little extra to read through last night. I did see several who'd had issues. Tough to really get at the true cause with the level of info we have, but proper assembly no doubt is critical. I really appreciate your advice and experience-you do more with scooters in a week than I'll do in a decade.

Thinking I'm going to stay the course with the Dr Pulleys, but am gonna use an OEM belt with the stock variator. Starting to get a sense of how the different parts relate to each other, and maybe how things should be used as part of planned system and not always mix and match.

Dr. Pulley slide pieces or Piaggio slide pieces?
The belt isn't going to make a difference in terms of performance, except that the Malossi Kevlar belt will last longer than the Chinese belt from Piaggio. Neither the Piaggio belt nor the Polini belt uses Kevlar or Aramid.

Dr Pulley weights with OEM guides.

Fake News!!!

The Piaggio belts are made by Mitsuboshi in Japan - and they DO contain Kevlar.

I am not a fan of mis-information.

Old News!!!

The belt for the 150 is not made in Japan and does not contain Kevlar. None of the new belts for any of the models are made in Japan anymore. The bigger belts do contain Aramid fibers. Malossi's belts are made in Japan now, and not the EC, and Polini also has their belts for the mid-size bikes made in Japan, but they don't use Aramid on their regular 150cc belt either.

This is going back a few years ago I dont remember the weight I used. But it was what was recommend for a 190cc kit. The sliders did not do too much for acceleration but I did notice a bit better performance in the 40mph zone. Either way my variatior broke pieces of aluminium came out and made it need to be replaced. I just remember for the price the performance was not enough and they only lasted me about 6k miles so no longer than stock. I did put in lower weight ones with the 190 kit in the scoot. That was pretty fun. I notice a huge difference in odd the line speed. But top end really suffered. Like a 5 mph drop. But I am also a 140lb rider. So my results might be different than yours.

Motovista, where do you get your information that the belt for 150's is not made in Japan and does not have Kevlar? Do you have a box for an OEM 150 belt that shows this? If so, why don't you post it for the rest of us to see. Jimc is usually spot on. Maybe its different for 150 belts, but I'm doubting it.

I have been following this website for 9 years and don't remember Dr Pulley sliders being an issue or multiple threads about it. Jess used to call BS on things like this and he was always right. He insisted on seeing photos to confirm bad Dr Pulley weights. We either never heard back from the poster or the photos appeared to show it was something else or it could not be determined to have been Dr Pulley weights as the issue.

The downside with Dr Pulley weights is that they are more expensive and may not give you the bang for your buck unless you are doing other mods at the same time. Some people on here swear by them. Depends on how you use them. There certainly isn't a consensus on MV that Dr Pulley sliders cause more problems compared to stock rollers.

Greasy said (in general) to use the EOM belt since its cheaper. Most of the other aftermarket belts are good, just usually more expensive. If you can find an aftermarket belt from a good brand, its fine to use. Malossi, Polini, Dayco are all good brands.

I have written about my variator failures using sliders several times.

In 88,000 miles of riding Rocket, my 2006 GT,, I have tried sliders two times.

The variators failed both times.

The second failure cost me a win in the 2014 Scooter Cannonball Run.

Sliders will never see the inside of my scooters again.

I found that they offered no improvement in performance.

Since then I have experimented in different weights in rollers to see how performance was affected.

Heavier rollers than stock deadened acceleration while offering no better top speed.

Lighter rollers, 9.5 or 10g vs the standard 10.7g in a GT improved acceleration while not affecting top speed.

That is what I use now.

Bill

Failures not withstanding how do 9.5 or 10 g slider's performance compare to conventional weights.

I stopped using them, so I have no answer to that.
Sticking with rollers is the safe option.
Bill

Thank you for chiming in, Bill. In the short time I've been reading MV, I've come to value your insight very much (but...watching TMax & XMax videos on YouTube could also be attributed to you, so there's that... ). Again, many thanks...88,000 miles one scoot is an awesome feat and definitely gives me something to shoot for!

Dave

Believe it or not, a lot has changed in the past few years as far as where Piaggio gets their stuff. If you took a Variator or Clutch out of a 2006 bike, it had TGB stamped right on it, and was made in Taiwan. The new ones don't, and aren't.
Piaggio belts don't come in boxes and Piaggio doesn't label country of origin on the retail packaging of their parts. They do often slap their tag on top of the tags from their suppliers from Vietnam and India, so a lot of that is fairly easy for the consumer to figure out. Also, on commercial invoices, the country of origin is usually shown. So if you purchase a commercial quantity of belts from Italy, the commercial invoice will usually show the country of origin, which is often Vietnam these days. In addition, the part number on the belt itself, and not the packaging, can often tell you where it was actually made.
OEM belts in the 125-150 range don't, as a rule, contain Kevlar, or Aramid fibers, and Piaggio belts are no exception. The Yamaha 125 motor goes about 12K miles between belt changes, without Kevlar. It's not necessary for most people who use this size bike for what it was designed as, an urban commute vehicle in heavy stop and go traffic. But that's not the same as running it wide open for miles at a time, which occurs a lot in the US, or putting out more power than the bike is supposed to generate, which is what people who race them usually do.
As far as Dr Pulley, it really doesn't matter if a lot of people on a forum look at photos of broken parts and can't tell what happened. Dr Pulley sliders show up in a lot of photos of variator failures and broken belts, not just here, but on a lot of scooter forums. Why do you think the mainstream hasn't adopted the concept? They've been around for years before Dr. Pulley started making them, and there are a lot of other companies that make them as well, so it's not because of patents or expense.

Nevertheless, the 150 and 300 OEM belts I purchased from you both had Kevlar in them and the triangular Mitsuboshi trademark on them.

Drive belts have to have some strengthening in them - the rubber would stretch and fail almost immediately without it. So what do these belts that you claim have no Kevlar in them actually use?

Usually Polyester and/or Nylon, and Neoprene.
I see the same issue as far as country of origin with some of the Honda OEM belts. Bando makes them, and most of them are made in Thailand. A lot of their manufacturing capacity in Japan is used now by aftermarket companies, much like RMS and other aftermarket companies still get the "good" stuff from TGB.
I'm pretty sure Mitsuboshi has a factory in Vietnam, and I know they have one in China.
Polini makes two different belts for the 150, one of them they market as a replacement for the OEM belt, and it doesn't have any Aramid fibers, their performance belt does. I think Malossi is the only company we carry that actually pays DuPont to use real Kevlar. Gates now uses generic Aramid fiber, and that seems to be the direction most of the industry is going. Most of the Kevlar belts you see advertised use Aramid fibers.

[quote="Motovista"Most of the Kevlar belts you see advertised use Aramid fibers.[/quote]

I thought Kevlar was Arimid. Or a brand of Aramid.

I suppose if one is paying $75-100/hr to have one installed then a few bucks on a belt doesn't matter.

Kevlar is the original DuPont product, and Aramid fiber is the generic version of it that a company doesn't have to pay DuPont to market and use. Kevlar is expensive, and so is generic Aramid fiber, just less so.
What is confusing to a lot of people is that some of the sellers of these products either don't know, or don't care, what the material used in the belt is, and will say it has Kevlar in order to make it seem better. This is especially true on Ebay and Amazon, where you can find a belt listed (good example is the Polini belt for the Honda Ruckus) as having Kevlar, when it doesn't. When you look at how a belt is constructed, and understand that many "kevlar" belts are purchased on Ebay and from other companies that pretty much make things up as they go along, you can see why many of the user experiences, and theories about ways Kevlar belts make a scooter perform differently (faster, slower, harder on components, etc) on forums reflect a lack of understanding of how belts are constructed and how they work. The components that matter in terms of how the belt works in the variator are the same, what is different is the long term durability and ability to take more horsepower and handle higher temperatures, like you get racing or running all day at high speeds.

Here are a couple of photos from Malossi that better illustrate the typical difference between regular and Kevlar, or Aramid, belts. The outer surface is usually the same material, so it's not something you can look at and say that one is Kevlar and one isn't. Keep in mind that there are quantity and quality differences in every component that goes into a belt.

And then there are a couple of photos from Polini that show their two different belts for the same Piaggio 150 engine.