Combines f3 main belt idler stop

[tbran]

we have had this before. Found two things. 1 the main drive belt has lost the cord tensile strength and is stretching under load. This allows the idler to come in and release the snubber and through vibration it gets thrown off. 2. Not enough tension on the idler spring. Some of the springs are stronger than others we found. We have replaced stock unit with a drawbolt unit (requres welding a bracket to accept drawbolt) off a M2_l2. It is also assumed your idler is not loose in the pivot area allowing a idler vibration effect. Finally we had a customer replace the rubber snubber with a shock as on the wobble box drive . These are the fixes. Really strange why some machines had this problem and others not and why more on F3's than F2's. Same setup. Go figure.

 

[jm]

tbran, The belt is fairly new and I had this problem before and after I put it on, the idler assy is tight. the spring my be the problem. I was thinking of fabricating a removable plate to hold the rod_snubber in the fork bracket. do you think this would work or cause other problems.

 

[Gleamer]

Our two belt M2 had a belt guide right under the engine drive pully that run right close to the belt on both sides and bottom to keep it close to the pully, Then at the main thresher shaft it had a round bar on the top that reached across the belt to keep it down on the pully to keep it from jumping off there. They wouldnt be hard to fabricate if you needed to...