[SLESTAK75]

Alright. I have been a very busy boy of late. And not buggy related mind you. I had my brother in law over the other day and took him for a ride around the hood. Buggy wouldn't downshift all the way and wouldn't pull a hill at all. Tore it down and a slider had rolled over and got stuck. Decided I wanted to try going back to the race groove and grease the inside of the pulley really well; as I didn't do that to begin with. I wondered which of my variators would do the best job and I came up with a simple but very effective method to test. I sat the variator (assembled with cam, pin, and drive face) on the floor as if it were installed on the engine. I placed downward pressure on the driveface in order to keep it all together. I then slid the belt in until it stopped, held it in place and carefully lifted the driveface away and took note of where the belt was sitting. This gave me a general idea of where the belt rode in low gear. I did this comparing both variators. I then took the variators and driveface and held them together as in high gear and placed the belt gently down between them and noted the position. This gave me a rough idea of where the highest possible position of the belt could be in high gear. What I learned from this is that my stoch 107mm variator had both a lower low and a higher high than the cheapo Koso 115mm variator. There is no way that the belt can travel to the top of the Koso because it would have to float in space not touching the ramps anymore. Not saying that other, better variators won't allow full travel but of the two that I had, the stock offered better performance. This is an easy way to compare variators. I did not notice any extra wear on my belt from the Motorio pulley. I lubed up the sliding part of the rear sheave really well, put it back on the racing grooves and reassembled. The test went as such. As I revved the engine the belt stopped travelling only slightly further up than with the previous setup. BUT, as I held the throttle wide open the belt stayed put and as it topped out the belt crept up another 2-3mm on the variator. Seems to me that with a slightly heavier sliders I may get that travel at slightly lower rpms. Because the rpm's I was pulling, I don't think I have enough power to get that high on the road. I may try some 12's in the future but that is as far as I will go. The test drive yielded a very smooth shift with more pull off the line and similar top end speeds as before. So now I have the stock variator, the lightweight driveface with the 1-2mm nub where the boss pin sits, the 1-2 mm shorter boss pin that came with the Koso, and the variator cam that came with the Koso, along with a well lubed Motorio pulley set in the race groove. And it is GOOD.