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hey guys

just thinking about the cougar 1 and belt drives in general

ive heard the cougar belt drive described as "sluggish", so do people in general upgrade to a geared box out of one of the other models or is the cougar belt drive a good thing?

its got me thinking about belt drives, in 4wds, my feeling is belt is more efficient, in 2wds, there arent many options, A & L lethal weapon can be fitted to a few cars, ive heard theyd get about 30 sec more run time out of 1200 cells back in the day with the belt tranny

i understand its hard to get belt drives to transfer big power motors, i'd more than likely only be running 540 or 17.5 at the max, any thoughts or info would be great

I dont have a lot to add to this, but I've got two beltdrive RCs that im working on restoring...a Kyosho Triumph and a Schumacher Cougar 2 Works. I can't wait to drive one of these. Ive never driven a car with a belt drive.

Belts are great.

I have run a 13T Brushless in my Top Cat with no dramas . Had to be carefull of no diff slipp but once adj it was fine.

As with any high output motor a slipper is always better to stop the drive train getting shocked from jump landings and hard take offs. I have just aquired a slipper for my Top Cat which will help it out.

As for belys being Slugish . I have hred that too but i never think so. Infact a Belt drive train is very smooth to drive . Maybe that's why they say slugish. My Top Cat is one of the smoothest 2wd cars i have even driven in vintage.

thanks for your thoughts mad racer, this is the weird thing, and it could be more dependant on the particular transmission but some say belts are more efficient, some say they arent, i agree that one of the coolest things would be the smoothness to drive, a feeling which is added to by how quiet they are

I think what drove people off belt transmissions (for 2wd, I mean!) is the drag vs. a "classic" 3-gear transmission... Probably it mattered a lot more bitd when we were struggling to make the 5mn mark. Today, with the absence of built-in drag brakes in BL mills and the insane batt capacity it shouldn't be an issue anymore... then there's slippage

The 3gear transmission structure is so refined by now it would probably take a looooong time to design a belt-driven case that would perfrom as well

Paul

From an engineering standpoint, belts are more efficient at high speeds. So the efficiency debate centers around transmission speeds. However, from experience (i did R&D for schumacher for many years) I can tell you that the geared trannies have much better punch in limited power scenarios. -Jeff

thanks for the input guys, it actually makes sense when i think about it, a simple 3 gear tranny would be hard to beat, especially for 540 racing